I made this at the request of someone on a Facebook LibreOffice group. The template was made using Claude Code.
Perfect example of AI failure. It has no concept why any living person uses spreadsheets. AI is completely ignorant of usability, elegance, simplicity.
personal_budget.ods (82.8 KB)
- Replaced all hard formatting with styles
- Separated database range.
- Removed all hard formatting.
- Added validation to column D.
- Added conditional formatting based on column D.
- Created 2 pivot tables with charts for complete dynamic aggregation without a single formula (let alone formulas with hard coded params).
If you need to impress your boss with macro code:
REM assigned to the sheet activate event
sub refresh_pivots()
sh =ThisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet
for each pv in sh.getDataPilotTables()
pv.refresh()
next pv
end subThe current state of AI reminds me of the old say, “lead, follow, or get out of the way”
A couple of points:
(1) The results we get (with AI) depends on the instruction we give it. My instructions for
for this template was, “create me personal budget tracker in Calc”. Now considering that was all the insruction I gave it, and it created the worksheet in around in 30 minutes, Claude did a pretty decent job.
(2) Using Claude Code, I was about the 3 extensions( Stock Picker, Stats Plots, Moving Averages) for Calc in less th 10 days without writing a single line of code, not a single line of code.
I’m way faster without needing more than a few lines of code (if any), and my results are human usable, really tracking things. The generated stuff looks as if it wants you to run all the code for every pile of incoming data.
I did not even use any database, which would be the one and only adequate tool for tracking budgets.
But I am not a developer.
I know a little python,
a little R,
a little SQL
and a little Excel/Calc.
But there is two things I do have time(I’m retired) and AI.
type or paste code here
BTW, Calc workbook are databases , not a relational database but a database none the less
Not really. A Calc Workbook can contain the same data as a database, but there are no rules to enforce behaviour. In Calc you can freely mix types in columns, enter formulas at any place, merge cells etc. Great freedom and endless possibilities, but I’d say without rules or structure this is no database.
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A spreadsheet user does not need all that pointless Python code. Spreadsheets have been invented as arithmetic tool for non-programmers.
How many untested and unmaintained macro extensions would you recommend to install in order to manage simple spreadsheet tasks for "the average user"™? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
Did you really try out your budget manager? Does it really help anybody?
And no, your bank does not store account data on spreadsheets nor does amazon, google, microsoft or any professional software tool. They all store data in databases. Storing real world data on spreadsheets is a very good reason to get fired, particularly when the spreadsheets are driven by guessing robots.