frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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.

In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

https://electrek.co/2026/04/18/in-the-uk-evs-are-cheaper-than-petrol-cars-thanks-to-chinese-compe...
1•breve•3m ago•0 comments

Crypto Hack Worth $290M Triggers DeFi Contagion Shock

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-19/crypto-hack-worth-290-million-triggers-defi-co...
1•helsinkiandrew•7m ago•0 comments

The Work Runs on Different Maps

https://yusufaytas.com/the-work-runs-on-different-maps
7•yusufaytas•9m ago•0 comments

Memjar: Uncompromising, local-first second brain

https://github.com/m00dy/memjar
1•m00dy•12m ago•0 comments

Tim Davis – Probabilistic engineering and the 24-7 employee

https://www.timdavis.com/blog/probabilistic-engineering-and-the-24-7-employee
1•kiyanwang•16m ago•0 comments

2005 PS2 Game Returning with New Release on PS5, PS4

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/ps2-playstation-2-games-ps5-ps4-release-2005/
1•01-_-•21m ago•0 comments

The framework built by a father in 2006 dominated the internet

https://comuniq.xyz/post?t=966
2•01-_-•22m ago•1 comments

An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the Largest Amish Community

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-an-amish-paradox-by-charles
1•barry-cotter•23m ago•0 comments

LlaMa.cpp Robot Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgZ3pmr0DIs
3•Pasyd•23m ago•1 comments

Performance • tldraw Docs

https://tldraw.dev/sdk-features/performance
2•aragonite•23m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is your Mac's menu bar throwing errors?

1•vsgherzi•24m ago•0 comments

SitTall – a macOS app that uses AirPods sensors to detect slouching

https://sittall.app/
1•anilatici•26m ago•1 comments

Anatomy of High-Performance Matrix Multiplication (2008) [pdf]

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~flame/pubs/GotoTOMS_revision.pdf
2•tosh•28m ago•0 comments

Visual Studio Code Agents App (Preview)

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_115#_visual-studio-code-agents-preview
2•maxloh•38m ago•0 comments

Hero Engineering: In Defense of Unreasonable Optimizations

https://deancalver.substack.com/p/hero-engineering-in-defense-of-unreasonable
2•DeanoC•43m ago•0 comments

Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

https://github.com/i12bp8/TagTinker
2•trueduke•52m ago•0 comments

Why Musicians Are Manufacturing Sold-Out Shows

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-17/how-bands-like-cameron-winter-s-geese-are-manu...
2•helsinkiandrew•55m ago•0 comments

A Private Recommendation System I Can Control

https://frankk.site/en/blog/controllable-recommendation-system/
1•langtang1996•58m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

3•modelcroissant•1h ago•0 comments

Waterloo’s live AI-goose tracker. Never get ambushed by a cobra chicken again.

https://www.waddleloo.com/
1•consumer451•1h ago•0 comments

Public grocery stores are having a moment. Can they make food more affordable?

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/public-grocery-stores-9.7168321
3•Teever•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Should I build *another* Markdown task manager?

1•simchri•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: AI Primer – A Searchable AI Changelog for AI Engineers and Creatives

https://www.ai-primer.com
1•andyasprou•1h ago•0 comments

Deleteduser.com –A $15 PII Magnet

https://mike-sheward.medium.com/deleteduser-com-a-15-pii-magnet-c4396eb21061
3•birdculture•1h ago•0 comments

Shyell – a Rust shell with built-in benchmarking and project-aware prompts

https://github.com/sumant1122/shyell
2•paperplaneflyr•1h ago•0 comments

Resources for starting and growing an AI safety org

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fBDMCLTv8Cx28cJeJ/resources-for-starting-and-growing-an-ai-safety...
1•omer_k•1h ago•0 comments

Splitt – A gym set tracker that does nothing else

https://trysplitt.com/
3•zack-p•1h ago•2 comments

How to raise fund from investor for my startup?

1•SRMohitkr•1h ago•3 comments

BFV

https://bloxfruitsplay.com/
1•BFV•1h ago•0 comments

SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017)

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot17/woot17-paper-guri.pdf
43•Eridanus2•1h ago•19 comments