This certainly works well if you only need to track one account, but my finances aren't even _that_ complicated and I still have accounts I try to keep up to date with five different banks (hometown bank with checking/savings, two credit cards, employer-sponsored retirement account with Fidelity, and a three-fund portfolio with Vanguard). All of those accounts have 2FA, so logging into each one, navigating to the download screen, and downloading it into the right spot easily adds up to fifteen minutes of work.
Ironically, I've found that since I started to rely more on downloading the CSVs and importing them (as opposed to entering everything by hand), I've been entering things less regularly because of the increased start up time. If each account just had an API to pull transactions, I could schedule a job to download everything daily and life would be so much better.
I was looking into getting a virtual accountant to log into my few accounts, download CSVs, import and reconcile. But like you said, the most annoying thing about this is logging in, waiting for dumb SMS-based 2FA, selecting date range, logging into a different browser since Safari isn't supported properly, etc etc.
I'm unsure if providing the virtual accountant bank credentials is more or less secure than Plaid/Yodlee, but this is a major pain point.
Sometimes they're just actually behind too! I'm a professional organist, and recently made my continuo debut with a pretty high level orchestra. I wanted to make a good impression, so at the rehearsal, my eyes were glued to the conductor, he gave a clear downbeat, I came in with him...and was at least half a second ahead of everyone else. I was eventually able to figure out how to adjust, but those first few entrances were rough.
After the rehearsal, I mentioned it to my boss, and he confirmed it's his experience with orchestras as well. They're somehow able to come in together but definitely behind what the conductor shows, while organists are used to staying exactly with the beat pattern. He said it's particularly annoying for things like the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, where the organ's supposed to come crashing in on a huge chord directly with the orchestra.
I'm nearing the 0.1 release of Burro, a new typesetting language intended specifically for text-heavy documents. (If you've used the mom macro set for groff, it will seem very familiar to you. I like to describe Burro as a spiritual successor to mom.) The goal is to eventually have all the power of TeX with a much more pleasant syntax (after all, a typesetting language should be easy to type!).
The goal of the 0.1 release is to have a strong engine for setting English text, and I'm pretty much there. The main focus of 0.2 will be the macro system and beginning work on internationalization.
I started Burro in October 2018 and took a four year break (yay side projects!). I came back to it early this year and have been working on it pretty consistently ever since. It's exciting to have gotten this far!
I am! To be honest, I was a little bit sad when typst first came out, because I'd already had Burro in the works for some time before then. However, typst and Burro are very different, so there's room for both to exist!
I love how you showed an input and output. I posted a language that I'm working on in this thread, and I'm definitely going to include that on my page.
Professional organist here! Having a VPO at home is life changing. I'm lucky to live within a ten minute walk from my current employer, which has quite legitimately one of the best organs in the world, but even then, being able to practice at home occasionally is wonderful.
I bought a new home organ about two years ago and (long story) hoped to integrate a pedalboard I already had into it. I still haven't gotten that working, so I'll definitely be looking at this site's pedalboard controller to finally get that working.
(Also, feel free to ask me anything about organs, organ software, etc.)
I'm actually _not_ a pianist, which often surprises people! I did of course start on the piano, but all of my high level training has been on the organ, and the technique is different enough that I don't feel comfortable playing pianistic writing anymore. I can pretend to be a pianist when necessary and make it sound good enough, but a competent pianist would notice plenty of flaws.
I can't speak to PianoTeq, but I've used both GrandOrgue and Hauptwerk as mentioned in the sibling comment. As a mostly FOSS user, I'd like to be able to just use GrandOrgue, and the software itself would work well enough for that. However, the quality and diversity of sample sets (organs recorded, one pipe at a time, to simulate playing different organs around the world) is nowhere near that of Hauptwerk. I work in a very Anglican music program with an English leaning organ, so being able to simulate an English cathedral organ is important to me. The organs available for GrandOrgue tend to be more German Baroque leaning and much smaller. In an ideal world, you'd be able to buy the same Hauptwerk sets for GrandOrgue, but licensing prevents that.
I once worked on building a GrandOrgue file editor, but the specification is a nightmare. I'd like to finish that project someday though.
PianoTeq is considered the best piano sound. some even argue it is better than a real grand piano (it never goes out of tune) - but only if you have a great keyboard (several thousand dollars!), and sound system (more $$$) They are not known for organ sounds though.
If you want organ sound, then the software to look at is: grandorgue, Hauptwerk ($$$, but reported to be great), Aeolus (simulates pipe via math, the rest work on samples of real organs). There are probably others, but the above is what I see come up most often when this is discussed.
Can I ask how you get the current balance from your bank (i.e., do you have a bank that provides a nice API, or is there another trick you're using)? I've spent a lot of time looking for a way to automatically download transactions from all my accounts but still have to either enter them by hand or manually log in and download a CSV to import.
I'm currently finishing my second year of what was supposed to be a two year term (but was recently extended to three years) as the organ scholar [1] at one of the larger churches in the U.S. The director of music and I are the only two organists on staff, so I get to play for thousands of people and accompany/conduct a professional choir every week. I left the tech world to do that because I knew I wanted to at least try working in music at some point in my career. I am still working on several open source projects, so I haven't taken a complete break from software development.
I'm technically 3/4 time at the church, so I've been looking for a part time tech job to augment that for the last two years, but have found getting one quite difficult since there are so few available. I always assumed this foray into church music would be a break from technical work and I'd go back after I was done, but my two closest mentors are strongly encouraging me to go to graduate school for organ performance after I finish my term, as my undergraduate degree is in math. I'm also somewhat concerned about my viability as a candidate trying to re-enter the tech world after being away for a few years.
I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do next year. I'm definitely happier than I ever was working in tech, although I struggle with feeling like I'm looked down upon for "just" being a musician. I also worry about the long term financial impact (retirement) if I do stay in church music, as the pay is obviously much, much lower than I'd expect otherwise. Unlike most people in this thread, I took my break early in my career, so I don't have a large pile of savings to fall back on.
Congratulations on that position! A sibling did a masters' in organ performance, and getting an Organ Scholar position is a solid achievement for an undergrad.
I would not worry too greatly about your skills not being viable, depending on what you are wanting to get back into later. If not in a SV/startup world, there are a lot of tech-adjacent companies who will look at you, see someone with an undergrad in math, a masters in something, and dedication to a technical craft, and strongly consider hiring you. Plus, you have something really interesting to talk about in an interview, and that's not worthless. I know the last time I was looking for a job, I got at least two interviews because of a very interesting previous job overseas (because the interviewers openly said, "you mat not have the typical experience we look for, but you had this job and tell us about that).
Ironically, I've found that since I started to rely more on downloading the CSVs and importing them (as opposed to entering everything by hand), I've been entering things less regularly because of the increased start up time. If each account just had an API to pull transactions, I could schedule a job to download everything daily and life would be so much better.