While AI has definitely stripped out a lot of the fun puzzle solving of coding (honestly, it’s just a waste of time not to start a coding project by turning to AI), it has made some of the things I dread about the process a snap.

My example for this week is writing up complex formulas in Excel—which is something I’ve never been particularly good at. Since we are ramping up our Amazon advertising at Ulysses and Velo for the holidays, and since Amazon advertising is all about the ISBN10/ASIN, I asked ChatGPT to write the formula for turning an ISBN13 into an ISBN10. It got the formula wrong for the first five tries, which took about 10 minutes, but eventually nailed it:

ChatGPT working through the ISBN13 to ISBN10 conversion.

The Excel formula it generated works perfectly allowing us to transfer any block of ISBN13s into their corresponding ISBN10s. For those interested, here’s the formula (which I’m really glad I didn’t attempt to do on my own):

=MID(A1, 4, 9) & IF(MOD(11 - MOD(SUMPRODUCT(MID(A1, {4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}, 1) * {10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2}), 11), 11) = 10, "X", IF(MOD(11 - MOD(SUMPRODUCT(MID(A1, {4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}, 1) * {10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2}), 11), 11) = 11, 0, MOD(11 - MOD(SUMPRODUCT(MID(A1, {4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}, 1) * {10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2}), 11), 11)))

You can also download a Google Sheet with the formula already added here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P2