frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•1y ago
After months playing with LLM models, here's my observation:

- LLM is basically useless without explicit intent in your prompt.

- LLM failed to correct itself. If it generated bullshits, it's an inifinite loop of generating more bullshits.

The question is, without explicit prompt, could LLM leverage all the best practices to provide maintainable code without me instruct it at least ?

Comments

ben_w•1y ago
Your expectations are way too high.

> - LLM is basically useless without explicit intent in your prompt.

You can say the same about every dev I've worked with, including myself. This is literally why humans have meetings rather than all of us diving in to whatever we're self-motivated to do.

What does differ is time-scales of the feedback loop with the management:

Humans meetings are daily to weekly.

According to recent research*, the state-of-the-art models are only 50% accurate at tasks that would take a human expert an hour, or 80% accurate at tasks that would take a human expert 10 minutes.

Even if the currently observed trend of increasing time horizons holds, we're 21 months from having an AI where every other daily standup is "ugh, no, you got it wrong", and just over 5 years from them being able to manage a 2-week sprint with an 80% chance of success (in the absence of continuous feedback).

Even that isn't really enough for them to properly "leverage all the best practices to provide maintainable code", as archiecture and maintainability are longer horizon tasks than 2-week sprints.

* https://youtu.be/evSFeqTZdqs?si=QIzIjB6hotJ0FgHm

revskill•1y ago
It's not as high as you think.

LLM failed at the most basic things related to maintainable code. Its code is basicaly a hackery mess without any structure at all.

It's my expectation is that, at least, some kind of maintainable code is generated from what's it's learnt.

ben_w•1y ago
Given your expectation:

> It's my expectation is that, at least, some kind of maintainable code is generated from what's it's learnt.

And your observation:

> LLM failed at the most basic things related to maintainable code. Its code is basicaly a hackery mess without any structure at all.

QED, *your expectations* are way too high.

They can't do that yet.

Antiquated CSS and why we needed it

https://blog.omgmog.net/post/antiquated-css/
1•HotGarbage•41s ago•0 comments

Release 13.0.8 · Grafana/Grafana

https://github.com/grafana/grafana/releases/tag/v13.0.8
1•kyisaiah47•3m ago•0 comments

Smash Bros: Melee for the Web

https://lucasigel.com/melee
1•lukeigel•3m ago•0 comments

Plug-in hybrids emit six times on average in official tests claim – new EU data

https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/plug-in-hybrids-emit-six-times-on-average-what-offi...
1•rguiscard•3m ago•0 comments

Free course covering basics of AI to be available to Canadians by end of year

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ai-essentials-government-courses-solomon-9.7337417
1•BiraIgnacio•4m ago•0 comments

Racing with the Machines

https://peterturchin.substack.com/p/cliodynamics-and-ai-the-mid-2026
1•harscoat•5m ago•0 comments

Ontario court records accessed in cybersecurity breach

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-courts-cyber-attack-9.7337861
2•BiraIgnacio•9m ago•0 comments

He's Seen Images of 9/11 from Just About Every Angle. Except This One.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/nyregion/911-disposable-camera.html
2•ChrisArchitect•11m ago•1 comments

OpenAI has solved the Navier-Stokes Millennium problem using $15M of AI effort

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2588063-openai-has-solved-the-navier-stokes-millennium-probl...
1•encodedrose•12m ago•1 comments

Show HN: A terminal Tetris game I made as my first Rust project

https://github.com/orangishcat/cursed-tetris
2•orangishcat•13m ago•0 comments

America Is the Outlier: What If We Privatized the Airport?

https://marbletech.us/p/america-is-the-outlier
2•kumarski•13m ago•0 comments

Antibody studies point the way to an HIV cure

https://www.aidsmap.com/news/sep-2026/we-finally-understand-what-we-have-do-antibody-studies-poin...
3•codebyaditya•16m ago•0 comments

A.I. Is Outsmarting Its Creators – The Daily

https://overcast.fm/+ABLPtsqdPGs
1•xaraya•19m ago•0 comments

Epstein Tycoon

https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/s/Hj6oRheiQw
4•razodactyl•24m ago•0 comments

The Open Source AI Stack

https://www.together.ai/blog/the-open-source-ai-stack
1•simonpure•25m ago•0 comments

Spacefast: Hosting for Agent Publishing

https://spacefast.com/
1•handfuloflight•26m ago•0 comments

iPhone Duo has a large crease

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1wbx1wo/there_is_a_crease/
3•FlamingMoe•26m ago•0 comments

HRF Condemns WP Engine for Blocking the Tyranny Tracker at the Kremlin's Behest

https://hrf.org/latest/hrf-condemns-wp-engine-for-blocking-the-tyranny-tracker-in-russia-at-the-k...
2•HotGarbage•28m ago•0 comments

Multigres v0.1 Alpha: an operating system for Postgres

https://supabase.com/blog/multigres-v0-1-alpha
3•znpy•28m ago•0 comments

FreeBSD working on new service manager

https://www.osnews.com/story/145933/freebsd-working-on-new-service-manager/
4•rguiscard•33m ago•0 comments

I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

https://blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/im-sorry-youre-not-going-to-die-from
28•jryb•35m ago•19 comments

The Software Engineering War

https://www.manager.dev/newsletter/the-software-engineering-war
2•fagnerbrack•36m ago•0 comments

Resting your laptop on your lap for long periods could risk skin disfiguration

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/resting-your-laptop-on-your-lap-for-long-periods-could-risk-skin-...
1•dabinat•38m ago•0 comments

WeWorm

https://calif.io/research/weworm
1•simonw•40m ago•0 comments

1900 Blizzard Developers Just Won a Union Contract

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-workers-union-contract-microsoft-2000732422
7•gpi•41m ago•0 comments

Belegio – Parsing grocery receipts down to the line item

https://belegio.loobia.net/en
1•MehrdadEshghi•43m ago•0 comments

iPhone 18 Pro Introduces 'Apple Reference Image' to Verify Photo Authenticity

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-reference-image/
1•pgwhalen•44m ago•0 comments

Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (1978) [pdf]

https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf
1•danbitengo•52m ago•0 comments

Screenmap

https://screenmap.dev/
1•handfuloflight•52m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why can I only downvote select comments?

4•socalgal2•53m ago•5 comments