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Comment by azan_ | Hacker News Reader

> The secret is that it doesn't work.

I have 100% vibecoded software that I now use instead of commercial implementation that cost me almost 200 usd a month (tool for radiology dictation and report generation).

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Wait, so you're a radiologist and you're using software you vibecoded to generate radiology reports for real patients? Is that, like, allowed?

Depends where in the world they are. Here in Hungary, it’s not uncommon to email your-family-doctor@gmail.com

What does that have to do with vibe-coding?

Not saying it's right, but boy do I have stories about the code used in <insert any medical profession> healthcare applications. Not sure how "vibecoded" programming lines of code is any worse.

Because that code is presumably working and the vibe code is probably not?

Honestly even if this wasn't vibe-coded I'm still a bit surprised at individual radiologists being able to bring their own software to work, for things that can have such a high effect on patient outcomes.

do you have evidence that all vibe coded solutions dont work? Because thats what you're implying.

If I wanted to prove murder, not negligence.

Of course it’s allowed. It’s just kind of text editor but with support of speech to text and structured reports (e.g. when reporting spine if I say l3 bd it automatically inserts description of bulging disc in the correct place in the report). I then copy paste it to RIS so there’s absolutely nothing wrong or illegal in that.

Vibe-coded radiology reports, finally the 21st century will get its own Therac-25 incident.

Yes I’m sure that text to speech with very nice fluff on top will have terrible consequences. It’s almost as bad as some radiologists using Word for writing reports which is not fda-approved (shocking I know!)

And yet I notice you haven't mentioned publishing it and undercutting the market. You could make a lot of money out-competing the existing option if what you produced was production-grade software. I'm guessing the actual case is that you only needed a small subset of the functionality of the paid software, and the LLM stitched together a rough unpolished proof-of-concept that handled your exact specific use case. Which is still great for you! But it's not the future of coding. The world still needs real engineers to make real software that is suitable for the needs of many, and this doesn't replace that.

>The world still needs real engineers to make real software that is suitable for the needs of many, and this doesn't replace that.

I think azan_ is demonstrating that shipping products 'suitable for the needs of many' is going to have to compete with 'slopping software for the needs of one'.

The only people who think that are programmers already or programmer-adjacent. Your mother is never going to be able to use a Gas Town-like workflow to make software for her own needs, nor is she even going to want to spend her weekends trying. These tools still require a baseline minimum of technical knowledge, and a real time investment, and also a real money investment the way some people are using them. Moreover, most real software has interoperability needs. A world where everyone makes their own Twitter or WhatsApp is a world where nobody can talk to anyone else.

There is a small subset of the population who is now enabled to make proof-of-concepts with less effort than before. This is no way diminishes the need for delivering performant, secure, interoperable software at scale to serve humanity's needs.

What if we packaged Gas Town up in an operating system userspace, put it on rails, and gave people an interface to it?

An interface isn't enough. Even if you never look at the code, the results are going to be influenced significantly by having the vocabulary to accurately describe what you want. The less sufficient your technical vocabulary, the more ambiguous your prompts will be and the less likely it is that the Polecats will be able to deliver anything resembling your unspoken imagination. To say nothing of being able to guide the lost critters when they run into problems.

> Your mother is never going to be able to use a Gas Town-like workflow to make software for her own needs, nor is she even going to want to spend her weekends trying.

I'm going on a tangent here but what's with this constant deprecation of mothers to make a point? There are many people here whose mothers can develop software.

People's mothers are statistically unlikely to be programmers, obviously. My own grandmother was a programmer, but it conveys the idea in two words rather than making up a clunky phrase to describe the exact degree of non-techiness of the hypothetical person.

I think it’s just a generalization. They could have said “your uncle Pete” without actually implying anything about anyone’s uncle named Peter.

It sounds like a medical device, in which case marketing it may require FDA approval or notification. Whereas vibe-coding a one-off tool for yourself might still require validation but you're the one taking the risk and accepting liability for it.

I think the thing you're missing is that the tool doesn't need to be marketed because someone else could ask their LLM to make them a similar tool but fitting their use case.

If they're using a 100% vibe-coded tool that they've never read the code of to replace something that would require government approval, for use on real-world patients, they're probably committing medical malpractice as we speak. Let us pray that is not the case.

It doesn't matter if the tool "needs" to be marketed. There is a market of paying customers. If other people are paying $200/month, both your and their lives would be improved significantly by you offering a $100/month replacement software. For all the talk about LLMs replacing the need for packaged software, people are still paying for packaged software, and while they are, you could be making large amounts of money while saving them money. If you're altruistic, you could even release it as FOSS and save a lot of people $200/mo. Unless, of course, your vibe-coded app isn't actually remotely capable of replacing the software in question.

Jumping to conclusion that I’m committing malpractice is completely uncalled for and offensive. > Unless, of course, your vibe-coded app isn't actually remotely capable of replacing the software in question. It is completely capable FOR ME. I’m not interested in publishing it because I love my job and it pays great already.

Not everything has to be monetized, buddy. It's okay to relax.

> If you're altruistic, you could even release it as FOSS and save a lot of people $200/mo. Unless, of course, your vibe-coded app isn't actually remotely capable of replacing the software in question.

My partner is a radiologist and I'd love to hear more about what you built. The engineer in me is also curious how much this cost in credits?

It CAN be cheap.

I built a clinical pharmacist "pocket calculator" kinda app for a specific function. It was like $.60 in claude credits I think. Built with flutter + dart. It's a simple tool suite and I've only built out one of the tools so far.

Now to be fair, that $.60 session was just the coding. I did some brainstorming in chatgpt and generated good markdown files (claude.md, gemini.md, agents.md) before I started.

How much costs you renting vibecoding tools?

such tools cost 10-20/mo usually?

Using mystery vibe coded software in a tightly regulated, consequence-heavy environment, that’s so reassuring! /s

Is it _just_ speech-to-text, or god-forbid are you giving it scans and having it write reports for you too?

It’s text to speech with structured reports support. Jesus Christ stop with the moral panic already.

FYI I also assumed that it is doing something more dangerous, mostly because you mentioned being radiologist as relevant.

Is it calling some external API or doing this text to speech locally?

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