frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

Node9 – A "sudo" wrapper for AI agents with auto Git snapshots

https://github.com/node9-ai/node9-proxy
1•nadav_tal•31s ago•1 comments

A Feral Guide to Marketing

https://aella.substack.com/p/a-feral-guide-to-marketing
1•jger15•1m ago•0 comments

Scientists Once Dropped Gophers on a Volcano. Now They're Heroes

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a70780384/gophers-mount-st-helens-eruption/
1•ColinWright•4m ago•0 comments

I built LionPost – send greeting cards with your own photos and voice messages

https://lionpost.com/
2•ibaird•7m ago•0 comments

Search Referral Traffic Down 60% for Small Publishers, Data Shows

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/search-referral-traffic-down-60-for-small-publishers-data-sho...
1•thm•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ShadowStrike EDR/XDR Kernel Sensor Development

1•Soocile•8m ago•0 comments

Reducing the size of Go binaries by up to 77%

https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/agent-go-binaries/
2•PaulHoule•9m ago•0 comments

Luxembourg High Administrative Court annulled a €746M fine against Amazon

https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=CA_Luxembourg_-_52757C&mtc=today
1•speckx•9m ago•0 comments

Our new Windsurf pricing plans

https://windsurf.com/blog/windsurf-pricing-plans
1•mxfh•10m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: AWS account restricted 18h despite remediation (Case 177385077300217)

2•trollderiu•11m ago•0 comments

Afroman Wins Civil Trial over Use of Police Raid Footage in His Music Videos

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/afroman-trial-lemon-cake-verdict.html
2•pseudolus•11m ago•1 comments

snap-confine + systemd-tmpfiles = root (CVE-2026-3888)

https://cdn2.qualys.com/advisory/2026/03/17/snap-confine-systemd-tmpfiles.txt
1•kevincox•11m ago•0 comments

Confluent bloodbath after IBM takeover (25% or 800 people)

https://old.reddit.com/r/IBM/comments/1rw8hjx/ibm_completes_acquisition_of_confluent/
1•robaato•16m ago•1 comments

A Trillion Transactions

https://tigerbeetle.com/blog/2026-03-19-a-trillion-transactions/
8•jorangreef•17m ago•0 comments

PHA Linux Will Never Implement Age Verification

https://twitter.com/MadScientist_42/status/2034420938645639662
2•bilsbie•18m ago•0 comments

Gerd Faltings awarded the 2026 Abel Prize

https://abelprize.no/article/2026/gerd-faltings-awarded-2026-abel-prize
1•mitchbob•18m ago•0 comments

Action Plan for Free Software and Digital Commons

https://code.gouv.fr/en/action-plan-for-free-software-and-digital-commons/
1•doener•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: KYC Verification Process Automation Using Agentic AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPlcnkUhQTQ
1•SimplAI_ai•19m ago•0 comments

A $5M prize awaits proof that quantum computers can solve health care PR

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/19/1134409/a-5-million-prize-awaits-proof-that-quantum-c...
1•joozio•21m ago•0 comments

Canada slips in World Happiness rankings, due in part to social media use

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/world-happiness-2026-canada-25-9.7134296
1•Fricken•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Lexicon – Write legal contracts in Markdown

https://lexicon.esq/
1•RichEO•24m ago•0 comments

Block AI Crawlers with NGINX at the Server Level (50+ bots detected)

https://github.com/GetPageSpeed/ngx_http_device_type_module
1•dvershinin•26m ago•0 comments

Trapped! Inside a Self-Driving Car During an Anti-Robot Attack.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/technology/trapped-inside-a-self-driving-car-during-an-anti-ro...
2•bookofjoe•30m ago•1 comments

NoClaw – Mac Mini Assistant the Unix Way

https://linuxtoaster.com/blog/noclaw.html
3•dirk94018•30m ago•1 comments

Run a team of Claws with 150MB RAM each, 70% less memory

https://zread.ai/alibaba/hiclaw/6-latest-updates
1•hllpark0311•30m ago•0 comments

'I know kung-fu' Projects

https://olano.dev/blog/kung-fu-projects/
2•facundo_olano•31m ago•0 comments

Local AI vs. Cloud AI Speed

https://tomtunguz.com/local-vs-cloud-speed/
1•worldvoyageur•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Play 90s classic X-Com – UFO Defense in the browser via WASM

https://playxcom.online/
1•mrmrcoleman•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: First Claude Code skill for building SaaS apps

https://fireact.dev/blog/build-saas-apps-with-ai-powered-development-skills/
1•sydcli•32m ago•0 comments

CEO of Order says Unity was a problem, overestimated its capabilities

https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/comments/1rxvw4q/mariina_hallikainen_ceo_of_colossal_ord...
1•embedding-shape•33m ago•0 comments