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.

What is your Cuck Level?

https://cucklevel.com/
1•pro_methe5•2m ago•0 comments

Orbit, an Open-Source Toolkit for Retrieval-Based Inference

https://github.com/schmitech/orbit
1•schmitech•3m ago•0 comments

When does a CEO get involved? When you're on your fourth Ford Focus

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1uru4d7/comment/owjp196/
3•0xWTF•4m ago•0 comments

How to Hide from Killer Drones

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/07/08/how-to-hide-from-killer-drones
2•nmstoker•6m ago•0 comments

Ex-Epoch Times CFO pleads guilty in $67M multinational money laundering scheme

https://apnews.com/article/epoch-times-cfo-indictment-money-laundering-a015b35aaeae44284f0026dc10...
5•petethomas•8m ago•1 comments

People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-open-ai-anthropic/687689/
1•davidklemke•8m ago•0 comments

New York Times says OpenAI hid evidence in ChatGPT copyright trial

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/09/new-york-times-says-openai-hid-evidence-in-chatgpt-copyright-tr...
3•sbulaev•8m ago•0 comments

And Then the Billionaire Paid Off $550M of Our Debts for $5.5M

https://idiallo.com/blog/billionaire-paid-off-550-million-dollars-of-our-debts
1•firefoxd•9m ago•0 comments

Victor Marx wins Colorado's three-way Republican primary for governor

https://coloradosun.com/2026/07/09/victor-marx-wins-colorados-republican-primary-governor/
1•mooreds•10m ago•0 comments

GeForce Trading Cards: Series 1 Celebrates the Generations of GeForce

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-trading-cards-series-1-summer-of-rtx-giveaways/
1•Jhsto•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Use Any Agent as an Orchestrator

https://github.com/backnotprop/orchestrator
2•ramoz•10m ago•0 comments

Seekable OCI: Lazy-Loading Container Images via Range-Request Indexing

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.06868
1•Jimmc414•11m ago•0 comments

Academia and the "AI Brain Drain"

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/academia-and-the-ai-brain-drain.html
1•JumpCrisscross•12m ago•0 comments

The weirdest things that mess up wi-fi – and how to improve your signal

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260708-the-weirdest-things-that-mess-up-your-wifi
3•billybuckwheat•12m ago•0 comments

Nobel-Winning U.S. Chemist Will Move to China to Lead A.I. Institute

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/science/nobel-winning-us-chemist-will-move-to-china-to-lead-ai...
3•metanoia_•13m ago•0 comments

Coding Glasses for AI Agents – Even G2 Terminal Mode

https://www.evenrealities.com/terminal
1•h14h•13m ago•1 comments

What It's Like to Suddenly Start Completely Believing in God [2022]

https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/what-its-like-to-suddenly-start-completely-believing-in-god
1•bookofjoe•14m ago•0 comments

Memory Scarcity, Open Models, and the Restructuring of the AI Industry

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.07207
1•Jimmc414•15m ago•0 comments

Weapon Systems Annual Assessment

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108457
2•Jimmc414•16m ago•0 comments

World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made

https://www.sciencealert.com/world-first-super-alloy-could-transform-the-way-metals-are-made
4•tejohnso•17m ago•0 comments

California universities stockpiling AR-15s, grenades and submachine guns

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/09/california-universities-military-equipment
6•sizzle•17m ago•2 comments

Fable Ban and Reversal Exposed We Cant Measure AI Cyber Risk in Real World

https://orionpolicy.org/washingtons-ai-ban-and-reversal-exposed-the-bigger-problem-it-cant-measur...
1•delschlangen•18m ago•0 comments

Lessons from CISA's Cyber Incident

https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/lessons-cisas-cyber-incident
2•guedou•19m ago•0 comments

Why American ambulance rides are so expensive

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-american-ambulance-rides-are
4•jyunwai•21m ago•1 comments

Patreon Blocks Crawlers from Stealing Creators' Work for AI Training

https://www.404media.co/patreon-cloudflare-partnership-ai-crawlers/
3•cdrnsf•22m ago•0 comments

An off switch for dual-use knowledge in AI models

https://www.anthropic.com/research/off-switch-dual-use
3•DeveloperErrata•23m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Why so few consumer AI companies?

1•JimsonYang•24m ago•0 comments

Head to head: Muse Spark 1.1 vs. GLM 5.2

https://runtimewire.com/article/head-to-head-muse-spark-1-1-vs-glm-5-2
1•ryanmerket•25m ago•0 comments

Event Sourcing (2005)

https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html
1•downbad_•26m ago•0 comments

Allstate accuses Broadcom of auditing it because it quit VMware

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/allstate-accuses-broadcom-of-auditing-it-b...
4•jnord•26m ago•0 comments