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.

Skillsoft Selling Global Knowledge Business to Enduring Ventures

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260520936193/en/Skillsoft-Announces-Sale-of-Global-Knowl...
2•root-parent•1m ago•0 comments

GLM-5.2 Is the New Best Open Model

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/glm-52-is-the-new-best-open-model
2•7777777phil•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Next Move Theory gives you an algorithm for every product decision

https://nextmovetheory.com
2•zamesin•4m ago•0 comments

Google I/O 2026 Mobile Playbook: AI Studio, Android CLI, and Antigravity

https://geekyants.com/blog/google-io-2026-mobile-playbook-ai-studio-android-cli-and-antigravity-f...
1•shymasen•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ScreenCam – create polished product demos on Mac

https://thescreen.cam/
1•catsjuice•5m ago•0 comments

AryStinger botnet infected D-Link routers worldwide

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/arystinger-botnet-infected-thousands-of-d-link-rou...
1•momentmaker•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I rebuilt the only parts of my IDE I use, in Rust, over a weekend

https://github.com/kyle-ssg/kyde
2•kyle-ssg•8m ago•0 comments

Tranthor – describe a retention play in English, agents build and run it

https://app.tranthor.com/dashboard/auth/signin
1•Wolf811•9m ago•0 comments

window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

https://steveharrison.dev/showdirectorypicker-opens-up-a-whole-new-world/
2•steveharrison•10m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Engrym – a Markdown knowledge base your coding agent reads and writes

https://github.com/laleshii/engrym
1•laleshii•11m ago•2 comments

Interactive Marketing with Playistry: Live Demo

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/interactive-marketing-with-playistry-live-demo-tickets-1991400498498
1•playistry•12m ago•0 comments

Becoming a dad changes men's brains

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-becoming-a-dad-changes-mens-brains/
3•momentmaker•12m ago•0 comments

Prediction: A Frontier open-source LLM Will Be Released On 3rd December 2026

https://blog.doubleword.ai/frontier-os-llm
1•hasheddan•13m ago•0 comments

Cory Doctorow review – the real price of artificial intelligence

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/22/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory...
1•fallinditch•15m ago•0 comments

Optimizing TanStack Start for Cloud Run

https://ben3d.ca/blog/optimizing-tanstack-start-for-cloud-run
2•bhouston•15m ago•0 comments

NimConf 2026: Extending Enu, and building 3D worlds with Claude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjOUEDfuzQI
1•dsrw•18m ago•1 comments

Microsoft researcher built goat-powered LLM in Age of Empires II

https://www.xda-developers.com/a-microsoft-researcher-built-an-llm-in-age-of-empires-using-goats-...
1•thunderbong•18m ago•0 comments

About the writing process (or lack thereof)

https://www.thefoxfirepub.com/blog/blog-post-title-four-lr658-tcthp-wf5mw-mx4m8-tgp6b
1•FantasticPulp•18m ago•0 comments

Do US insurers arbitrage capital regulations with private ratings?

https://www.ft.com/content/35a5475d-0c90-4b2c-b7d4-a7ceeeea5afd
2•petethomas•19m ago•0 comments

The Classic Movie That Was Nearly Destroyed by a Single Line of Code

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/toy-story-5-saved-pixar-78e29161
1•tzury•20m ago•1 comments

An experiment in co-authoring my writings with Opus

https://obaid.wtf/jotbook/2026/06/20/built-a-rival-to-the-worlds-largest-fanfiction-platforms.html
2•wtfobaid•24m ago•0 comments

An Agent Capability Library

https://samihonkonen.com/posts/an-agent-capability-library/
2•shonkone•25m ago•0 comments

Verge on Vibecoding

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/950844/vibe-coding-security-risks-apps
2•iugtmkbdfil834•26m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Argus – Self-hosted observability that replaces dashboards with a chat

https://github.com/precious112/Argus
4•PreciousH•26m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Eventra – TypeScript static analysis for unused feature detection

https://eventra.dev
1•and-1991•26m ago•0 comments

Why I had to stop using vertical tabs

https://gopeek-lovat.vercel.app/blog-stopped-vertical-tabs.html
4•GeorgeWoff25•28m ago•1 comments

The Twilight of AI Vampires

https://essays.cborodescu.com/p/the-twilight-of-ai-vampires
2•cborodescu•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Socket to Me, a static file server that runs in the browser

https://socket2.me/
2•markjivko•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I rebuilt Jobs To Be Done on scientific foundations and open-sourced it

https://github.com/zamesin/Next-Move-Theory-Canon-and-Skills
4•zamesin•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Got sick of ads, so I made my own logic puzzle site

https://puzzlelair.com/
3•HaxleRose•28m ago•0 comments