frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

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.

Feedback on open source AI agent builder

1•ajaysheoran2323•24s ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI-powered Autofill for your Job Applications

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bidhub-copilot/kbejjeccedbnbepoahmaajojcgfjcakj
1•cednore•1m ago•0 comments

Xteink X3, a 3.7inch mini e-ink reader with magsafe

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/03/xteink-x3-review-tiny-magnetic-ereader/
1•walthamstow•1m ago•0 comments

How intelligent is S3 Intelligent-Tiering?

https://sagi.org/posts/how-intelligent-is-s3-intelligent-tiering/
1•sagiba•3m ago•0 comments

I'm Suing the Justice Department and FBI

https://this.weekinsecurity.com/plot-twist-i-am-suing-the-justice-department-and-fbi/
1•speckx•4m ago•0 comments

Chloroquine, an Anti-Malaria Drug as Effective Prevention for Hantavirus (2021)

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cellular-and-infection-microbiology/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2...
1•OutOfHere•4m ago•0 comments

The A.I. Industry Is Booming. When Will It Make Money?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/the-ai-industry-is-booming-when-will-it-actuall...
1•FinnLobsien•4m ago•0 comments

Why people hide AI usage at work?

https://bhagyeshpathak.com/uncategorized/2025/07/14/why-people-hide-AI-usage-at-work/
1•bhagyeshsp•4m ago•0 comments

How to make SSE token streams resumable, cancellable, and multi-device

https://zknill.io/posts/everyone-said-sse-token-streaming-was-easy/
1•zknill•5m ago•0 comments

The beauty of postmodern classical music

https://itsiweinstock.substack.com/p/the-beauty-of-postmodern-classical
1•surprisetalk•6m ago•0 comments

Does ChatGPT know your business exists? Free corpus diagnostic

https://citeddigital.co/audit/
1•connorwhitlock•7m ago•0 comments

Stop Talking Down to Me: Notes on Three Years of AI Chat

https://devcodehack.com/stop-talking-down-to-me-notes-on-three-years-of-ai-chat/
1•par•8m ago•0 comments

In Praise of Wild-Eyed Principles (2017)

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2017/08/10/praise-wild-eyed-principles
1•robtherobber•8m ago•0 comments

AI and Claude: The internal rebellion that changed Amazon's rules

https://thenewstack.io/amazon-coding-agents-developers/
1•Brajeshwar•9m ago•0 comments

The context window has been shattered: Subquadratic debuts 12M-token window

https://thenewstack.io/subquadratic-12-million-context-window/
3•throwawayfour•9m ago•0 comments

Google Chrome silently installs 4 GB Gemini Nano AI model without consent

https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/5/google-chrome-silently-installs-4-gb-gemini-nano-ai-model-t...
4•Gedxx•9m ago•0 comments

Global weather data from flying airplanes (2025)

https://clickhouse.com/blog/planes-weather
1•zX41ZdbW•9m ago•0 comments

Herd – a lightweight multi-agent IDE, built with GStack

https://joinherd.ai/
1•satosheth•10m ago•1 comments

The 90-day window: identity theft after death

https://killswitch.app/blog/identity-theft-after-death-greg-biffle-case-vulnerability-window
1•ElixirMentor•11m ago•0 comments

Loon GPU – A Real Implementation of "No Graphics API"

https://www.kevin-gibson.com/blog/writing-a-bindless-gpu-abstraction-layer/
1•molive•11m ago•0 comments

Mythos is the best cybersecurity news we've ever had

https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/05/06/mythos-cybersecurity-ai/https://sfstandard.com/opinion/...
2•littlexsparkee•12m ago•2 comments

Optimizing Software Factories

https://tomtunguz.com/optimizing-software-factories/
3•nowflux•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: VT Code – Rust coding agent with AST-validated shell and OS sandboxing

https://github.com/vinhnx/vtcode
1•vinhnx•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A bookmarklet app that saves bookmarks to GitHub Gist

https://github.com/chrisdiana/gistkeep
2•inflam52•15m ago•0 comments

I'm sooo excited to announce that I built my first SaaS BookIt, a small booking

https://bookit.fyi/
1•kx0101•15m ago•0 comments

Los Alamos and the long path to detecting neutrinos

https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/from-ghost-particle-to-cosmic-messenger
1•LAsteNERD•15m ago•0 comments

Huawei braces for $12B in AI chip revenue-Chinese fabs can barely keep up

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/huawei-expects-12-billion-in-ai-chip-revenue-this-year...
1•sleepyguy•17m ago•1 comments

Solving the Problem of Kerosene Fungus

https://www.shell.com/business-customers/aviation/100years/setting-safety-standards/kerosene-fung...
1•thunderbong•17m ago•0 comments

I analyzed 10k Reddit posts to find what drives B2B traffic

https://reddbot.ai/blog/i-analyzed-10-000-reddit-discussions-to-reverse-engineer-b2b-traffic-here...
1•jackbuilds•17m ago•0 comments

Emotional regulation is a dying art

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/emotional-regulation-is-a-dying-art/
3•rossdavidh•19m ago•0 comments