4 ms·

His part of the payment buckets has a clear definition problem. He is making a hard system instead of a soft system. A soft system solution could be on the cust

• jodrellblank 18y ago
  But you can already do it yourself customer side - keep track of what you spend per category, either in a text file, spreadsheet or dedicated budgeting program (Quicken, MS Money, etc).
  • alecco 18y ago
    Of course, but it is a PITA and a small minority does it. Still, my point is the complexity problem he addresses in that example is due to the monolithic nature of the solutions he envisioned.
    • ph0rque 18y ago
      Mint.com reduces the PITA level by 99% (for me, at least).
      • alecco 18y ago
        The security and privacy trade-off is way too much for me.
        • jrockway 18y ago
          Presumably anyone could just go through your trash and get as much information about you as mint.com has.
          • alecco 18y ago
            Many people are still unaware of this problem, yes. But that doesn't make giving my passwords and all my information to a single small startup right.
          • raintrees 18y ago
            It would seem to me that forcing said person(s) to relocate geographically to carry out that work would cut down a large percentage of the actual exploits. Not an all or nothing result, but largely beneficial, nonetheless.
  • silentbicycle 18y ago
    I've done exactly this for the last few years. I have a bunch of text files with likes like # 3rd (of march) mail 2.23 mailing for bookmooch lunch 6.04 soup and sandwich @ riverfront cafe espresso 1.29 # 4th groc 29.57 groc run etc. I was previously totaling it with a short Python script, but now I'm using a tiny awk script (it's exactly the sort of thing it was designed for). Either way, it's incredibly easy to parse simple text files like that, dump the results out to gnuplot, etc. Just plugging in receipts once every week or two doesn't take very long.