zlacker

>>martin+(OP)
> I helped one recently almost one-shot[3] converting a 30 sheet mind numbingly complicated Excel financial model to Python with Claude Code.

I'm sure Claude Code will happily one-shot that conversion. It's also virtually guaranteed to have messed up vital parts of the original logic in the process.

>>decima+lc
It depends on how easily testable the Excel is. If Claude has the ability to run both the Excel and the Python with different inputs, and check the outputs, it's stunningly likely to be able to one-shot it.

>>linsom+4d
Something being simultaneously described as a "30 sheet, mind-numbingly complex Excel model" and "testable" seems somewhat unlikely, even before we get into whether Claude will be able to test such a thing before it runs into context length issues. I've seen Claude hallucinate running test suites before.

>>AlotOf+4e
It compacted at least twice but continued with no real issues.

Anyway, please try it if you find it unbelievable. I didn't expect it to work FWIW like it did. Opus 4.5 is pretty amazing at long running tasks like this.

>>martin+Ye
I generally agree with you, but I tried to get it to modernize a fairly old SaaS codebase, and it couldn't. It had all the code right there, all it had to do was change a few lines, upgrade a few libraries, etc, but it kept getting lots of things wrong. The HTML was wrong, the CSS was completely missing, basic views wouldn't work, things like that.

I have no idea why it had so much trouble with this generally easy task. Bizarre.