Meet Bethany Hunt, a stay-at-home mom who first started vibe-coding 8 weeks ago and has already built 8+ mobile apps, with several more on the way.
A lifelong computer enthusiast but never a software engineer herself, Bethany has had a decade+ wishlist of apps that she'd like to use but that have never appeared on the App Store or Google Play. (Or, even worse, they were only available as secondary features within some bundled suites requiring a cloud account, a monthly subscription, a willingness to endure ads every 30 seconds, etc.)
So, hearing about the coding capabilities of GPT and Claude, Bethany decided that the best way to see something done is to do it yourself.
Armed with these tools, plus a powerful innate intellect and an unrelenting tenacity, Bethany built "Shelf Scan", an augmented-reality app that uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to enable your phone's camera to find a specific book on a shelf of hundreds.
With the successful creation of "Shelf Scan", Bethany went on to create several more apps, such as a tool to keep track of items you've loaned out to friends, and a personal log of post-meal health issues to help you find potential food allergies.
She's launched Ulix, a one-person startup through which she can market and sell these apps.
Hear her story! Listen to her describe how she learned to use these tools, and the process she uses for creating her own apps. It's a remarkable tale of how someone with ideas, ingenuity, and patience can truly create something from nothing with the help of AI.
---
Ulix: https://ulix.app/
See Bethany's apps on the Google Play Store:
Shelf Scan: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
Track Analysis: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
With several more in development, coming soon! Sign up for Ulix's mailing list to keep up-to-date with Bethany's work!
Are 24-year-old AI whiz-kids really getting $100M employment contracts with Meta? Can average Joes create apps merely by describing them? Will mercury enter retrograde in Ash's rising sign? Will Mikhail bust out a copy of Oregon Trail on a 5.25" floppy? Tune in and find out!
Google debuts a video generator called Veo3, which creates combined video and audio at unprecedented quality. Ash uses this technology to play a game of billiards with a giraffe. The hosts talk about reports of an AI blackmailing an engineer to prevent its own shutdown, and Mikhail constructs a live demo of a scenario to show just how easily something like that can happen. He proceeds to go all grumpy-old-man about how the kids today can’t sculpt marble anymore.
ChatGPT’s personality gives users the "ick". Bots dominate Reddit debates. Duolingo goes AI-first. Anthropic peeks into how AI “thinks”, and Microsoft presents hyperefficient BitNet. Ash praises blockchain tech and Vedic cosmology. Mikhail dons the Amulet of Kings.
Mikhail tech-dives into GPT’s new built-in image skills, enabling AI to “think” a bit more like an artist. Ash debates Bill Gates' predictions about jobs that will survive the AI wave. Mikhail riffs on how the core nature of the profession of software engineering is shifting — much like blacksmiths gave way to machinists, then to CAD designers. The hosts wrap up with news about China developing humanoid robots for use in factories, and how their humanlike versatility will reduce costs for transitioning to automation. Phoenix snoozes beside Mikhail's monitor.
Guest Doug Stewart talks about the importance of genuine empathy and human connection as key business differentiators in the age of AI, and highlights surprising advantages that small, agile companies and individual innovators have over large, entrenched institutions. Ash reminds us just how early we are in the AI revolution, with windows of opportunity still opening. Mikhail discusses character attributes, dabbles as a Bond villain, and presses B to skip over Ash.
