Show threadTom SheppardMay 1
I'm about to give up on the #Banktivity to #GnuCash migration. It's a complex transition and all the A.I. tools have failed. They get close, but still screw up transactions. I don't know if I could ever trust the migration. But I have enough data in GC now to look at its fugly reports. It really is a dated UI. Banktivity is much more of a Mac app. GC's use of decimal arithmetic is much superior to Banktivity's inexact floating point though. What WERE they thinking?
Show threadTom SheppardApr 28

#ChatGPT: "I sure hope you enjoy my totally rewritten code where I mismatch arguments between functions, forget whole functions, and don't protect against null variables. Here are the 69 patches you should make. Say, have you considered upgrading to a paid plan so instead of just losing your sanity, you lose money too?"

I am getting so close to giving up on A.I. and trying to figure out the solution myself. Migrating from #Banktivity to #GnuCash is a … challenge.

Show threadTom SheppardApr 21
I find it amusing that many tech people use #Claude for programming. To get my #Banktivity to #GnuCash conversion done I've been trying it, #Gemini and even #Copilot, but all have failed. Claude generated beautiful object-oriented code that took minutes to run. Gemini created mostly function code that was 75% of the size but runs in a few seconds. I'm using that as my base and trying to debug the rest myself since Gemini can't finish the project.
Show threadTom SheppardApr 18
I asked Claude to convert #Banktivity to #GnuCash by exporting directly from SQLite database to database. It thought a long time and produced a script that came pretty darn close with some glaring weirdness. Transaction dates in the GnuCash database look fine, but they're displayed months different. Also, the GC database is much smaller so I'm wondering what's missing. This at least looks promising.
Show threadTom SheppardApr 16
I’m trying to move away from #Banktivity. #GnuCash was a disaster. I heard about #Beancount but I was skeptical; how could a flat text file have any performance? But I was willing to concede they knew something I didn’t. I fought like hell to import my QIF export and although there were problems, enough worked for me to try it out. It is stunningly … slooow … as expected. It takes 8(!) seconds on an M4 Mac mini to open a single transaction! I deleted the whole awful mess. Still searching.
Show threadTom SheppardApr 14

I'm trying to import a QIF file exported from #Banktivity into #GnuCash and it does import, but the account balances are wildly wrong. One nasty bug in GC's importer is that if a split transaction has two items and one of them doesn't have a category, GC uses the category from one item and the amount from the other as a single non-split entry. It just throws away the categorized amount. I 💩 you not!

HTF does this get by testing? What other horrors await as I try to resolve this mess?

Tom SheppardApr 14

#Banktivity app: "We see you don't want to pay for our new and expensive subscription model for a mature app that barely changes and is U.S. centric anyway. Sure, you can try to use our export tools but our QIF format causes import errors on other apps and our CSV export is useless because we don't export security names. But go ahead, give it your best shot, sucker. In summary, F you, pay us!"

Me: "So, you're saying I should just reverse engineer your SQLite database and do my own export?"

Show threadTom Sheppard has movedOct 1, 2023

#Banktivity manual: "One exciting new feature of Banktivity is the global “Find” command…"

Exciting? Uh, you and I have different ideas of what's exciting.

And you know, it would be keen if you'd at least document how the search works because it's not normal. It appears to be, "Find any transaction that matches all the individual search words but only one word needs to be in any text field, and they're not whole words." I gotta say, that does not provide the optimal results.

Tom Sheppard has movedOct 1, 2023
#Banktivity app: "Oh, I see you're searching for 'Shopper Drug Mart', well here are all the results from Shoppers and Shopper's too because we know that's what you really want. No, no, we don't allow you to quote the search string to get an exact match. Trust us, we know what we're doing. We're much smarter than you."
Tom Sheppard has movedAug 1, 2023

Me: "Please print this report in landscape mode."

Banktivity for macOS: "Portrait mode it is."

Me: "You do know that respecting page orientation has been an option going back to System 1, I think? That's almost 40 years ago. But your programmers don't have the skills to support it now with all the OS advances?"

Banktivity: "Well, they are kinda lazy but we still love 'em."

#Banktivity