> 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).

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Depends where in the world they are. Here in Hungary, it’s not uncommon to email [email protected]

What does that have to do with vibe-coding?

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.

How much costs you renting vibecoding tools?

such tools cost 10-20/mo usually?

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!)

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?

It is fine to have criticisms of this, I have many, but saying that Yegge hasn't built real software is just not true.

Yegge obviously built real software in the past. He has not built real software wherein he never looked at the code, as he is now promoting.

Ok but this entire idea is very new. Its not an honest criticism to say no one has tried the new idea when they are actively doing it.

Honestly I don't get the hostility. Yegge is running an experiment. I don't think it will work, but it will be interesting and informative to watch.

The 'experiment' isn't the issue. The problem is the entire culture around it. LLM tools are being shoved into everything, LLMs are soaking up trillions in investment, engineers are being told over and over that everything has changed and this garbage is making us obsolete, software quality is decreasing where wide LLM usage is being mandated (eg. Microsoft). Gas Town does not give the vibe of a neutral experiment but rather looks be a full-on delve into AI psychosis with the way Yegge describes it.

To be clear, I think LLMs are useful technology. But the degree of increasing insanity surrounding it is putting people off for obvious reasons.

I share the frustration with the hype machine. I just don't think a guy with a blog is an appropriate target for our frustration with corporate hype culture.

> Ok but this entire idea is very new. Its not an honest criticism to say no one has tried the new idea when they are actively doing it.

Not really new. Back in the day companies used to outsource their stuff to the lowest bidder agencies in proverbial Elbonia, never looked at the code, and then panickedly hired another agency when the things visibly were not what was ordered. Case studies are abound on TheDailyWTF for the last two decades.

Doing the same with agents will give you the same disastrous results for comparably the same money, just faster. Oh and you can't sue them, really.

Maybe it's better, who knows.

Fair point on the Elbonia comparison. But we can't sue the SQLite maintainers either, and yet we trust them with basically everything. The reason is that open source developed its own trust mechanisms over decades. We don't have anything close to that with LLMs today. What those mechanisms might look like is an open question that is getting more important as AI generated code becomes more common.

> But we can't sue the SQLite maintainers either, and yet we trust them with basically everything.

But you don’t pay them any money and don’t enter into contractual relationship with them either. Thus you can’t sue them. Well, you can try, of course, but.

You could sue an Elbonian company, though, for contract breach. LLMs are like usual Elbonian quality with two middlemen but quicker, and you only have yourself to blame when they inevitably produce a disaster.

The experiment is fine if you treat it as an experiment. The problem is the state of the industry where it's treated as serious rather than silly — possibly even by Steve himself.

> saying that Yegge hasn't built real software is just not true

I mean... I feel like it's somewhat telling that his wikipedia page spends half its words on his abrasive communication style, and the only thing approximating a product mentioned is a (lost) Rails-on-Javascript port, and 25 years spent developing a MUD on the side.

Certainly one doesn't get to stay a staff-level engineer at Google without writing code - but in terms of real, shipping software, Yegge's resume is a bit light for his tenure in BigTech

no that's not true. I rarely now write a SINGLE line of code both at work or at home. Even simple config switches, I ask codex/gemini to do it.

You always have to review overall diff though and go back to agent with broader corrections to do.

[delayed]

Just because they're one-off tools that only one person uses doesn't mean it's not "real software". I'm actually pretty excited about the fact that it's now feasible for me to replace all my BloatedShittyCommercialApps that I only use 5% of with vibe-coded bespoke tools that only do the important 5%, just for me to use. If that makes it a "sand castle" to you, fine, but this is real software and I'm seeing real benefit here.

> I'm actually pretty excited about the fact that it's now feasible for me to replace all my BloatedShittyCommercialApps that I only use 5% of with vibe-coded bespoke tools that only do the important 5%, just for me to use.

Aren't you worried that they'll work fine for 3 weeks then delete all your data when you hold them slightly different? Vibe coded software seems to have a similar problem to "Undefined Behaviour", in that just because it works sometimes doesn't mean that it will always work. And there's no limit on what it might do when it doesn't work (the proverbial "nasal demons") - it might well wipe your entire harddrive, not just corrupt it's own data.

You can of course mitigate this by manually reviewing the software, but then you lose at least some of the productivity benefit.

> Aren't you worried that they'll work fine for 3 weeks then delete all your data when you hold them slightly different?

It might. It probably won't though. I don't see any code in it that deletes files. And, unlike BloatedShittyCommercialApp (and its cousin, BloatedDoEverythingOpenSourceApp), the code is going to be relatively small and if I do have doubts I can easily check to see what it's doing. I can build it quickly. I can patch it quickly. I don't have to file a bug to someone and beg him to look at it. I don't have to worry that the next release is going to break stuff I want and add stuff I don't want.

I recently moved my home theater PC from Kodi to a tiny bespoke vibed video player app, that basically just wraps libVLC with a minimal Android GUI. It's like 3000 lines of code total. I can practically keep the entire app in my head. If I need to fix something, it's 5 minutes in my dev terminal and then adb install. Ever tried to find and fix a bug in Kodi? The goddamn thing takes forever to even build, let alone debug. And that's even open source. I don't even have a remote chance of getting a bug fixed in professionally-built proprietary software.

> the code is going to be relatively small and I do have doubts I can easily check

Continues to make an app with 150K lines.

The whole "real software" thing is a type of elitism that has existed in our field for a long time, and AI is the new battleground on which it is wielded.

Of course it works. I haven't looked at code for my internal development in months.

I don't know why people keep repeating this but it's wrong. It works.