Brian Hartgen

I am the Co-Owner of Hartgen Consultancy. I enjoy music, old time British radio, books, music and much more.

Last Notes

2026-08-18 22:07:43 UTC

I have to write something serious here while I am still in the mood to do it.
There are now very many Vibe Coded apps around. I do not take away the fact that people sometimes find them useful.
However, allow me to write about a situation I have just encountered.
I am not particularly fond of free apps. I do not need to use any of them. That is for me, and only me, to decide.
I think many of them do not take account of Braille, there is far too much information sent to the screen-reader, and in many cases have not been tested with JAWS.
If you like me or loathe me for that, I don't mind.
But I know a lot of people are gaining pleasure from creating these apps and using them. That is fine.
However, I recently read about an app which I thought could be quite good and productive.
I installed it. As an experienced keyboard user, even I could not use the keystrokes, and I found that the app was very poor in terms of quality. The documentation for use was simply diabolical. But I proceeded anyway.
So I tried to uninstall it. I could not. Upon investigation, I found the uninstaller routine was seriously defective.
I've spent the past hour removing folders and registry entries and I'm now happy that the machine is in good condition.
Look, I know these apps are looking very attractive, and AI agents are making it easy for people to create them.
But to developers: do you not realise that you have a moral responsibility at the very least to be upfront to provide your contact details for support? If you want to offer your app for distribution, that means you have to take on the responsibility of technical support. That means you have to provide your contact details for anyone who requires support. That is fair.
In terms of submitting problems, I've seen some developers who are quite public in saying, if you have a problem, file an issue. That is their stock answer. It really is not good enough. If you want to create an app, you should be providing contact information such as an email address.
Some developers do not even provide easy ways of even installing their apps. Their documentation is so absolutely appalling that you have no idea how to install the wretched thing. They expect you to grab it from GitHub which many people are not familiar with navigating.
Yes, I am really on one tonight, and if you want to challenge me over this, do you know what, I could not give a damn quite honestly. This experience has made me absolutely furious.
All I want to get across is this. There are considerable benefits to Vibe Coding. But for users of such apps, for goodness sake proceed with considerable caution. Check that you know who has produced the app, how to obtain it and what to do if things go wrong. If possible, use a portable copy of the app.
In conclusion, this situation was entirely my own fault. I should have installed the app on a test machine first.

2026-08-17 21:08:02 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…lter I didn't use that no. I used the Hal screen-reader from Dolphin.

2026-08-17 19:55:08 UTC

I was talking to a lovely American lady this afternoon. She said that she used to use the Window-Eyes screen-reader and she asked if I had ever heard of it? Had I heard of it? I thought it was brilliant.
I purchased it at the Sight Village exhibition one year, and I really pushed it as far as it could go when they had set files to support applications. I did a lot with those including creating set files for Sound Forge and MSN Messenger.
What a product it was.