frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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.

Oilwell is a wellness app to help you embrace climate chaos

https://oilwell.app/
1•doener•1m ago•0 comments

Flow Neuroscience

https://www.flowneuroscience.com/
1•antfarm•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: This week we shipped 'Surfaces' on rynk.io

https://twitter.com/farsn_/status/1999764184729551073
1•thefarseen•2m ago•0 comments

Breaking Down Trump's 2025 National Security Strategy

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/breaking-down-trumps-2025-national-security-strategy/
1•thomassmith65•2m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: is Archive.is a Kremlin Asset?

2•leoh•10m ago•0 comments

Kpython – A MicroPython Sidecar for the Linux Kernel (Experimental)

https://github.com/pymergetic/kpython
2•kpython•13m ago•1 comments

What is "involution", China's race-to-the-bottom competition trend

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/what-is-involution-chinas-race-to-the-botto...
2•bill38•16m ago•0 comments

50 Years of Proof Assistants

https://lawrencecpaulson.github.io/2025/12/05/History_of_Proof_Assistants.html
1•thunderbong•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Clai – Unixlike CLI context feeder for LLMs. Now with recursive tooling

https://github.com/baalimago/clai
1•baalimago•20m ago•0 comments

Technology Radar

https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar
1•pykello•23m ago•0 comments

Public Prompt License (PPL) – prompt-native licensing for LLM prompts

https://shipfail.github.io/public-prompt-license/
1•huan42•30m ago•0 comments

Hetz Demo – build HTML tables online, copy code instantly (no signup)

https://hetz.ct.ws/demo-table/
1•aminekhd•38m ago•2 comments

The military's new AI says boat strike 'unambiguously illegal'

https://san.com/cc/the-militarys-new-ai-says-hypothetical-boat-strike-scenario-unambiguously-ille...
3•saubeidl•39m ago•0 comments

Android PSA: have at least 2 ways of taking your files (especially pictures) out

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1hvowp3/psa_have_at_least_2_ways_of_taking_your_files/
1•sipofwater•41m ago•4 comments

Computer Animator and Amiga fanatic Dick Van Dyke turns 100

3•ggm•43m ago•2 comments

Where Disney Is Heading in Its Next Century [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lfBScCk6R0
1•mgh2•47m ago•0 comments

What's the point of lightweight code with modern computers?

https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/97426.html
2•jandeboevrie•52m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zunorm – BYOM Spreadsheet Editor

https://zunorm.com
1•ashv•57m ago•0 comments

How well do LLMs generate R code?

https://skaltman-model-eval-app.share.connect.posit.cloud/
2•doener•58m ago•0 comments

Life in Gaza under Israel's all-encompassing surveillance regime

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/watched-tracked-targeted-israel-surveillance-gaza.html
8•richardatlarge•1h ago•1 comments

Trump Pretends to Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That's Legal

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/12/trump-pretends-to-block-state-ai-laws-media-pretends-thats-le...
4•beardyw•1h ago•0 comments

Conscious of the Effects of Structural Racism

1•kwoii•1h ago•0 comments

At the Cafe – or the online "playground" for Caffeine

https://caffeine-lang.run/blog/at-the-cafe
1•bob-surfs•1h ago•0 comments

Reatom – State managers for any kind of apps

https://v1000.reatom.dev/
1•reconvene1290•1h ago•0 comments

Agentic AI in Retail: How Autonomous Shopping Is Redefining the Customer Journey

https://www.bain.com/insights/agentic-ai-in-retail-how-autonomous-shopping-redefining-customer-jo...
1•gmays•1h ago•0 comments

From Hand-Signed Forms to LLM's: The Evolution of Order Submission

https://blog.everstrike.io/evolution-of-order-submission/
1•mo3rew4r•1h ago•0 comments

COVID Origins. Debunking the Grift, Pseudoscience, & Politics of Lab Leak Theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra0WKNhQZ0U
1•vo2maxer•1h ago•0 comments

Interactive Visualization of the Standard Model of Particle Physics

https://llsourcell.github.io/physics/standard_model.html
1•llSourcell•1h ago•1 comments

5 Jobs 4 years and the mindspace leading to it

https://ritavdas.substack.com/p/the-things-i-said-id-never-do
1•fandango1•1h ago•0 comments

What happens when the coding becomes the least interesting part of the work

https://obie.medium.com/what-happens-when-the-coding-becomes-the-least-interesting-part-of-the-wo...
2•obiefernandez•1h ago•0 comments