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Show HN: I'm a dermatologist and I vibe coded a skin cancer learning app

(molecheck.info)
423 points sungam | 1 comments | 07 Sep 25 10:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.241s | source

Coded using Gemini Pro 2.5 (free version) in about 2-3 hours.

Single file including all html/js/css, Vanilla JS, no backend, scores persisted with localStorage.

Deployed using ubuntu/apache2/python/flask on a £5 Digital Ocean server (but could have been hosted on a static hosting provider as it's just a single page with no backend).

Images / metadata stored in an AWS S3 bucket.

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lazarus01 ◴[07 Sep 25 15:35 UTC] No.45159105[source]▶
What you created is a version of “am I hot or not” for skin cancer. The idea is constrained to the limitations of your programming capability. Showing a photo and creating 3 buttons with a static response is not very helpful. These are the limits of vibe coding.

I was thinking to train a convnet to accurately classify pictures of moles as normal vs abnormal. The user can take a photo and upload it to a diagnostic website and get a diagnosis.

It doesn’t seem like an overly complex model to develop and there is plenty of data referring to photos that show normal vs abnormal moles.

I wonder why a product hasn’t been developed, where we are using image detection on our phones to actively screen for skin cancer. Seems like a no brainer.

My thinking is there are not enough deaths to motivate the work. Dying from melanoma is nasty.

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g-mork ◴[07 Sep 25 15:43 UTC] No.45159175[source]▶
You're talking down to a technically unskilled dermatologist for successfully producing a useful app without the help of an engineer? Curious behaviour! This is far from the first story like this, in combination they're a potent bellwether for the future of our little corner of the universe, engaging in denials really doesn't help anyone
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lazarus01 ◴[07 Sep 25 15:56 UTC] No.45159314[source]▶
I wouldn’t call it “successful” or “useful”. It was a low effort attempt to make something interesting and it wasn’t. It’s a response to the hype of vibe coding. Lowers the bar for what good software really is.

Perhaps you may want to question your bias and ability to process criticism.

Anyone who shares their ideas publicly will receive criticism. Not only is it ok, it’s helpful to expand the discussion beyond your bias.

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1. jgilias ◴[07 Sep 25 19:30 UTC] No.45161395[source]▶
The issue is that your criticism is misguided and not very helpful. In your parent comment you totally miss the forest for the trees. Or, the reason why this app has been made in the first place.

Further, your suggestions are inactionable, and again, miss the point. It’s a low effort - “Lol, why don’t you just…”. No, the point is not to find skin cancer. The point is to show a bunch of pictures to people who are interested, and let them see if they can identify worrying skin lesions.