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.

Asthma Control Before and After Changing Gas Stoves to Electric Stoves

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213219826005374
1•tchalla•2m ago•0 comments

Vanishing archaeological landscapes in Mesopotamia:CORONA imagery site detection

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13420
2•Jimmc414•8m ago•0 comments

Microsoft 365 outage affects Teams, SharePoint and other services

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-365-outage-affects-teams-sharepoint-and...
1•Khaine•8m ago•0 comments

Deep in a Vermont Lake, a Contagious Cancer Is Spreading

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/science/contagious-cancer-catfish.html
1•eigenhombre•8m ago•0 comments

Automated sign detection across the Electronic Babylonian Library

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22608
1•Jimmc414•10m ago•0 comments

Police Removed Prominent Scientists from the ADA Meeting. Researchers Respond

https://www.the-scientist.com/police-removed-prominent-scientists-from-the-ada-meeting-researcher...
3•fosco•10m ago•0 comments

When Abraham Lincoln Fought a Duel:The Astonishing Saber Duel of Abraham Lincoln [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nSCZCtGpQs
1•fortran77•10m ago•0 comments

Minimalist Film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalist_film
2•hopelessluca•11m ago•0 comments

Echo Chamber: how bubbles form, and how to break them

https://echo.logicaleap.com/?e=1.4&a=0&rho=0.1&h=0.8&n=150&od=6&seed=42&topo=ba&b=0&k=8&t=random&...
1•gmays•14m ago•0 comments

The Myth of the 'Waterfall' SDLC

http://www.bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html
1•b-man•17m ago•0 comments

Why AI works worse in your language

https://artifipedia.com/blog/multilingual-ai
1•ilreb•24m ago•0 comments

In a first, Chinese woman wins the prestigious Fields Medal

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/23/g-s1-135032/in-a-first-chinese-woman-wins-the-prestigious-fields-m...
1•jdnier•27m ago•0 comments

China's Electric Trucks, Diesel's Peak, and What Western Planners Still Dont See

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/22/chinas-electric-trucks-diesels-peak-and-what-western-planner...
2•xbmcuser•28m ago•0 comments

Second Nature

https://twitter.com/thegarden_sf/status/2079825241816334763
1•gdss•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Is there water? Live answers for Austin's creeks, lakes, and springs

https://atxwater.info/
1•mrctte•35m ago•0 comments

Pixuma: Fundamentals of Computer Science and Mathematics

https://pikuma.com/
1•bananaboy•35m ago•0 comments

Parasocial Relationships Shape Our Lives

https://medium.com/theentertainmentbreakdown/the-unreality-of-the-truman-show-parasocial-ideas-cf...
1•raynchad•37m ago•0 comments

Broadscale Deep Learning for Maya Settlement Detection in G-LiHT Lidar

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-025-09741-5
1•Jimmc414•51m ago•0 comments

Wayback Machine

https://web.archive.org
1•trekhleb•53m ago•0 comments

Computational Identifiability

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19361
2•simonpure•53m ago•0 comments

'Vibecoded' Apps Are Flooding the App Store. Is That Good for Apple?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/apple-app-store-vibecoding.html
1•bookofjoe•54m ago•2 comments

Teorema Combina: El Combinador Lógico Del Observador

https://zenodo.org/records/21461759
1•Javiercombina•54m ago•0 comments

Brockovich Data Center Reporting – U.S. AI Data Center Awareness and Issue Map

https://brockovichdatacenter.com/index.html
2•thunderbong•55m ago•0 comments

Australia's ban on social media for under-16s has jolted EU into belated action

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2026/07/18/australias-ban-on-social-media-for-under-16s-has-j...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•56m ago•0 comments

EU fines Alphabet $1B US for Google Play, search infractions

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/eu-fines-alphabet-google-9.7280498
6•1vuio0pswjnm7•58m ago•1 comments

Quirky health care tech company calling employees back to the office full-time

https://fortune.com/2022/12/06/harry-potter-dining-hall-dry-cleaning-treehouse-epic-systems-retur...
1•Anon84•1h ago•1 comments

Chrysalis Zero Trust Agent Registry

https://baursoftware.com/zero-trust/chrysalis
1•toadkicker•1h ago•0 comments

From Frontier Models to Enterprise Execution: Why Kimi Partnership Matters Now

https://www.cloud-net.ai/news/from-frontier-models-to-enterprise-execution-why-cloudnet.ai’s-kimi...
1•y2so•1h ago•0 comments

Grocery Shopping in the Age of Explosive Diarrhea

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/progress-report/grocery-shopping-in-the-age-of-explosive-diarrhea
1•fortran77•1h ago•0 comments

Elon Musk Says This Will Be Tesla's 'Biggest Product'

https://www.inc.com/georgia-fearn/elon-musk-says-this-will-be-teslas-biggest-product-ever-if-it-c...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•2 comments