frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

Agent-rendered: the pattern that replaces runtime infra with build-time AI

https://gumeo.github.io/post/agent-rendered-infrastructure/
1•gumeo•2m ago•0 comments

Vulnerabilities in OpenClaw: A Complete Enterprise Security Analysis

https://ClawNanny.com/docs_viewer?markdown_url=/static/docs/ClawNanny_OpenClaw_Enterprise_Securit...
1•OpenSystemApps•3m ago•0 comments

Minecraft Source Code Is Interesting

https://www.karanjanthe.me/posts/minecraft-source/
2•KMJ-007•3m ago•0 comments

AI Pentester

https://www.noscope.com/
1•realtryhackme•4m ago•0 comments

Update iOS to protect your iPhone from web attacks

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126776
1•tech234a•5m ago•0 comments

New "PolyShell" flaw allows unauthenticated RCE on Magento e-stores

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-polyshell-flaw-allows-unauthenticated-rce-on-m...
1•uyzstvqs•5m ago•0 comments

Generalized Dot-Product Attention: Tackling Real-World Challenges in GPU Kernels

https://pytorch.org/blog/generalized-dot-product-attention-tackling-real-world-challenges-in-gpu-...
1•matt_d•5m ago•0 comments

Delve (YC W24) – Fake Compliance as a Service – Part I

https://deepdelver.substack.com/p/delve-fake-compliance-as-a-service
1•sebmellen•6m ago•0 comments

M^2RNN: Non-Linear RNNs with Matrix-Valued States for Scalable Language Modeling

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14360
1•matt_d•7m ago•0 comments

COW Fork: Zero-Copy Sandbox Cloning for AI Agents

https://multikernel.io/2026/03/19/sandlock-cow-fork/
1•wang_cong•8m ago•0 comments

Netcup Increases Prices over 21%

https://www.netcup.com/en/priceadjustment
1•gethly•9m ago•0 comments

Location of French aircraft carrier leaked in real time via Strava user on board

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2026/03/19/stravaleaks-le-porte-avions-charles-de-ga...
1•asp1•10m ago•0 comments

360B tokens, 3M customers, 6 engineers

https://vercel.com/blog/360-billion-tokens-3-million-customers-6-engineers
1•gmays•14m ago•0 comments

Beat Paxos

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/03/break-paxos.html
1•ingve•14m ago•0 comments

Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)

https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html
1•birdculture•16m ago•0 comments

Justice Department Disrupts Iranian Cyber Enabled Psychological Operations

https://www.publicnow.com/view/938A7EFC4064A4EE42581494308F60A13767ADEA
1•Animats•16m ago•0 comments

US Jobless Claims Fell Last Week to Lowest Since January

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-19/us-jobless-claims-declined-last-week-to-lowest...
1•DGAP•17m ago•0 comments

Kalshi in Hot Water – What This Means for Startups Like PolyBets

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/technology/arizona-criminal-charges-kalshi.html
2•realJared54•17m ago•0 comments

Crypto.com lays off 12% of workforce as latest company to cite AI in job cuts

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/crypto-com-layoffs-12percent-ai-job-loss.html
2•DGAP•18m ago•0 comments

Young Adults Are Not Happy

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2026/03/19/young-adults-are-not-very-happy/
2•nznbody•18m ago•0 comments

Tricks That Made Amiga Games Look 3D

https://www.generationamiga.com/2026/03/19/the-mind-blowing-tricks-that-made-commodore-amiga-game...
1•atan2•25m ago•0 comments

Firefox Update Will Prompt Users to Accept Terms of Use at Startup

https://windowsreport.com/firefox-update-will-prompt-users-to-accept-terms-of-use-at-startup-with...
2•belorn•25m ago•0 comments

The AlexNet moment for RAG. March 19th 2026

https://lighton.ai/lighton-blogs/the-bloated-retriever-era-is-over
1•nuitblanche•25m ago•0 comments

A static site generator and website transferring under 20kB

https://theconsensus.dev/blog/2026/03/19/a-static-site-generator.html
1•eatonphil•26m ago•0 comments

Meteorite hunters scour Ohio for fragments of 7-ton space rock that crashed

https://apnews.com/article/ohio-search-meteor-asteroid-fireball-explosion-990fdb46f4c0c447357e4c0...
2•petethomas•27m ago•0 comments

US Mint can begin producing Trump commemorative gold coin

https://apnews.com/article/trump-gold-coin-250th-anniversary-8be387e70ae561c62e27552bf47fb430
4•petethomas•28m ago•3 comments

Taskybear: Agent for you daily Planner and Habit

https://openinapp.link/taskybear-app
1•kravixstudio•28m ago•0 comments

PostgreSQL extension to set connection to read-only mode (for AI agents and MCP)

https://github.com/danolivo/safesession
1•tanelpoder•28m ago•0 comments

What's inside a Lego SMART brick? [Teardown/decapping/imaging video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7l6nSAm4hk
1•lysace•29m ago•0 comments

Google Invokes First Amendment to Shield Gmail Users from Piracy Subpoena

https://torrentfreak.com/google-invokes-first-amendment-to-shield-gmail-users-from-piracy-subpoena/
2•gslin•34m ago•0 comments