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.

Ampleforth: A Live Literate Editor

https://newspeaklanguage.org/Live22Paper.html?snapshot=AmpleforthViewer.vfuel&docName=Live22Paper
1•tosh•3m ago•0 comments

Interconverting Std:Function with Copyable_function

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2026/07/26/function-explosion/
1•jandeboevrie•13m ago•0 comments

JIT for the Code Vectorization Can't Optimize

https://medium.com/@DolphinDB_Inc/beyond-vectorization-dolphindbs-jit-compiler-gets-a-ground-up-r...
1•yiweileng•13m ago•0 comments

A practical partitioner for distributed simulations on sparse dynamic domains

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3787521
1•matt_d•13m ago•0 comments

Doing general vibe math in Programming Language Theory

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/2081458495006634477
1•tosh•14m ago•0 comments

I built a project management tool because every alternative felt too complicated

https://www.simplegantt.net
1•maciekdebiec•15m ago•0 comments

Searching for Robots Is Surprisingly Hard

https://rohboter.com/
1•mrsamramirez10•15m ago•0 comments

Authoritative Dnsmasq in a MikroTik Container

https://op-co.de/blog/posts/mikrotik_authoritative_dnsmasq/
1•jandeboevrie•15m ago•0 comments

EU Fines Google $1.02B for Favoring Its Own Services

https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-fined-1-02-billion-under-eus-tech-antitrust-rules-7e8ae1fb
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•21m ago•0 comments

Waymo Is Racking Up Thousands of Dollars of Parking Fines in Austin

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/waymo-is-racking-up-thousands-of-dollars-of-parking-fines-in-a...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•23m ago•0 comments

RedHat 7.2 (2001), Abiword 1.0, & Sanger's Rule towards kernel development

https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/07/redhat-72-2001-abiword-sangers-rule.html
1•initramfs•24m ago•0 comments

Brief Answers to Cosmic Questions (~2000)

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/faq.htm
2•tempestn•25m ago•0 comments

F-14A Central Air Data Computer (CADC) FPGA Reconstruction

https://github.com/ATaylorCEngFIET/f14_CADC/
1•starkparker•26m ago•0 comments

Study: Curious robots mimic how children can learn to understand language

https://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2026/7/24/curious-robots-mimic-how-children-can-learn-unders...
1•giuliomagnifico•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Rainslice – AI Employees for Home Services Businesses

https://rainslice.ai
1•edgware674•31m ago•0 comments

Keyboard Shortcuts are my Superpower

https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/how-keyboard-shortcuts-are-my-superpower/
1•robin_reala•36m ago•0 comments

Amazon Music's Artist Conflation

https://www.jefftk.com/p/amazon-musics-artist-conflation
1•luu•37m ago•0 comments

China Chipmaker CXMT Jumps 472% in Debut After Blockbuster IPO

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-26/china-memory-champion-cxmt-set-to-debut-after-...
2•magnio•37m ago•0 comments

Antares: Highly Efficient Open Weight AI Models for Vulnerability Localization

https://blogs.cisco.com/ai/introducing-antares-the-most-efficient-open-weight-ai-models-for-vulne...
1•chillax•39m ago•0 comments

SecretSpec 0.17: Scopes, secrets caching, SOPS, age, and systemd credentials

https://secretspec.dev/blog/secretspec-0-17-scopes-secrets-caching-age-and-systemd-credentials/
1•domenkozar•45m ago•0 comments

Open dataset of i2c addresses and voltages for 50 common boards

https://github.com/i2c-net/i2c-address-dataset
1•chzburgrz•51m ago•0 comments

TIRx: An Open Compiler Stack for Evolving Frontier ML Kernels

https://tvm.apache.org/2026/06/22/tirx
2•EvgeniyZh•59m ago•0 comments

3D Printed Nuclear Reactor [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwRWRDrfrvA
1•flitzofolov•1h ago•1 comments

Tell HN: Leaving your country is your only real leverage

4•julienreszka•1h ago•6 comments

Show HN: Spur solver – Z3-backed model-finder solved values for coding agent

https://github.com/getspur/spur/tree/main/crates/spur-solver
1•mf_kevintruong•1h ago•0 comments

Basilisk: Fast 100% PEP compliant Python type checker

https://www.basilisk-python.dev/
1•theusus•1h ago•0 comments

Psion Emulator – classic Psion palmtops in your browser

https://joehaines.com/psion/
1•randkyp•1h ago•0 comments

The most official water costs $120k a gallon

https://signoregalilei.com/2026/07/26/the-most-official-water-costs-120000-a-gallon/
3•srijan4•1h ago•0 comments

AI Workspace for Your PC

https://stuard.ai
1•Ifesol•1h ago•1 comments

Verisign Cooperative Agreement

https://www.ntia.gov/program/verisign-cooperative-agreement
5•themaxdavitt•1h ago•0 comments