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.

World Radio History

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/index.htm
1•gregsadetsky•4m ago•0 comments

Kaisel – Routes as Values. Dart 3 Native Router for Flutter

https://kaisel.dev/
2•TheWiggles•4m ago•0 comments

Franken.domains: Stitched-Together Domains, Because Every .com Is Taken

https://franken.domains/
2•klausbreyer•5m ago•0 comments

Amazon spent $1.8M using Claude for menial coding task, went 860% over budget

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/amazon-accidentally-spent-usd1...
1•PLenz•6m ago•0 comments

US authorities see 'significant escalation' in attacks on water system devices

https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/us-authorities-escalation-attacks-water-system-devices/826...
1•ripe•7m ago•0 comments

Simplicity

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2023/12/simplicity.html
1•pbohun•9m ago•0 comments

I Fired My AI Assitant

https://chreke.com/posts/i-fired-my-ai-assistant
1•speckx•12m ago•0 comments

When AI Starts Writing Systems Code

https://www.coreauto.com/blog/when-ai-starts-writing-systems-code
1•skidrow•13m ago•0 comments

We stopped using RSC on Tanstack.com

https://tanstack.com/blog/we-stopped-using-rsc-on-tanstack-com
1•agos•13m ago•0 comments

An AI radio station that draws a live comic of its hosts' thoughts

https://hiveweaver.fm/en/
1•Yesbert•13m ago•0 comments

An Open Letter to AI for Generating Gnome Shell Extensions

https://blogs.gnome.org/jrahmatzadeh/2026/07/27/ego-ai-reference/
1•Shock9889•13m ago•0 comments

Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption to stop malware flood

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/arch-linux-disables-aur-package-adoption-to-stop-m...
1•Brajeshwar•14m ago•0 comments

Better tools made Copilot code review worse. Here's how we actually improved it

https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/better-tools-made-copilot-code-review-worse-heres-ho...
1•opwizardx•14m ago•0 comments

Go 1.27 Interactive Tour

https://victoriametrics.com/blog/go-1-27/index.html
1•birdculture•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Goulash – heckler/helper to local-LLM your shell as little as possible

https://github.com/chaboud/goulash
1•chaboud•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An MCP server that knows what that error message means

https://errors.standardbeagle.com/
1•andybrummer•16m ago•0 comments

Scientists using LLMs will 'do more, less well', modelling study predicts

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02397-5
2•bookofjoe•19m ago•1 comments

Show HN: BillDesk – Offline invoicing for freelancers (Windows and Mac)

https://getbilldesk.vercel.app
1•afif1710•28m ago•0 comments

How to Read Mathematics? A Study Guide

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24136
2•tcp_handshaker•28m ago•0 comments

Aispa: User-Centric System Prompt Auditing for Large Language Model Applications

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28617
1•tcp_handshaker•30m ago•0 comments

FIFA, Thrive

https://www.marginpoints.com/issues/2026-08-01-fifa-thrive
1•historian1066•31m ago•1 comments

Vintage Computer Festival at CHM (today and tomorrow)

https://computerhistory.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-4/
1•utopcell•32m ago•0 comments

AI Questions Spoil Book and Movie Heat on 'Call Me, I'll Hide the Body' Novel

https://deadline.com/2026/07/ai-questions-debut-novel-book-film-buzz-1237013254/
2•speckx•33m ago•1 comments

A free online book on modern software architecture

https://oleksiyp.github.io/arch-book/
1•oleksiyp•36m ago•1 comments

People found a way to stay "online" on Teams, Slack, and Zoom while being away

https://medium.com/@Edem.mirotan/the-trending-free-online-browser-tool-remote-workers-cant-stop-u...
1•Adam-Hincu•37m ago•0 comments

Juno – Online J IDE

https://jsoftware.github.io/juno/app/
1•meken•41m ago•0 comments

Advice for First Ten Customers

1•noreplydev•42m ago•0 comments

The Attention Rebuild: How 2026's Open Models Made 1M Context Fit on Machines

https://vettedconsumer.com/the-attention-rebuild-how-2026s-open-models-made-1m-context-fit-on-mac...
2•ermantrout•43m ago•0 comments

'It beggars belief' as DWP 'drags its heels' over subpostmaster prosecutions

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366646239/It-beggars-belief-as-DWP-drags-its-heels-over-subpo...
1•latein•43m ago•0 comments

AIs Anna Delvey Problem: How Enterprises Are Faking It Till They (Don't) Make It

https://sdarchitect.blog/2026/08/01/ais-anna-delvey-problem-how-enterprises-are-faking-it-till-th...
3•SanjeevSharma•45m ago•0 comments