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This is what AI coding actually excels at—and it’s not what you think


AI programming tools are super neat and interesting, but how useful are they, really? I found a completely new use for Codex the other day, and it’s changing how I see AI programming platforms entirely.

I wanted to connect my new 3D printer to Home Assistant

The existing plugin didn’t support my model

I recently got the FlashForge Creator 5 Pro 3D printer, and I absolutely love it. Shortly after getting it, I went on a tangent to try and get all of my 3D printers working without the cloud, as I wanted everything to run locally.

The problem came when I tried to bring the Creator 5 Pro into Home Assistant. It’s a brand-new printer, and the existing Home Assistant plugins simply weren’t updated yet to support it. I checked the GitHub for the plugin and didn’t see any indication on it supporting the Creator 5 Pro, so I figured I’d have to either build my own plugin or just update the existing one.

It was actually way easier than I thought to make it work, and it only took a few prompts for it to be more reliable than my Bambu printers in Home Assistant.

Codex’s coding capabilities came in clutch for the port

All I had to do was give Codex a working example from GitHub

Tight crop of ChatGPT Codex on iPad connected to Patricks MacBook Pro local. Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek

I had a bit of a leg up on getting my Creator 5 Pro working with Home Assistant, I will admit. You see, the first thing I did with the Creator 5 Pro was get it working in Orca Slicer. The Creator 5 Pro is so new that it doesn’t really work anywhere else, so it took a bit to get it working there.

Thankfully, Flash Studio (FlashForge’s slicer) is based on Orca Slicer and is open source. So, I fed the source to Codex and told it to get to work on both tasks.

I started with Orca Slicer because that was the most crucial, and it also gave me the foundation I needed for getting the Home Assistant plugin working.

This is really where Codex shines. I didn’t have to have Codex write a bunch of code from scratch. All I did was give it the Home Assistant plugin and the FlashForge GitHub and told it to make the two work together.

It took a few tries to get everything working flawlessly, but after that, it really was flawless. I think this was due, in part, to starting with known working source and just having Codex adapt it instead of trying to write it from scratch.

This opens up new doors I never knew existed

All you need is a solid foundation and the knowledge of how to use Codex or Claude Code

Codex open on a MacBook Pro showing a chat about converting Notion documents to Obsidian. Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek

While I’ve used Codex to build multiple websites and mobile apps, this was a completely new world for me—taking two existing projects and molding them together. I couldn’t be happier with the result.

Using Codex in this way has significantly opened up so many doors for me in the homelabbing world. The other day, I deployed Bambuddy on my server to control my Bambu printers. Since I had already used Codex to modify the Home Assistant plugin for FlashForge, I had it do the same for Bambuddy.

Now, my Bambuddy instance manages both my Bambu printer and my FlashForge printer. I did the same thing with Orca, again, but this time for my Bambu Lab A2L 3D printer. It was supported in Bambu Studio, but not Orca.

So, I gave Codex the Bambu Studio GitHub and told it to make it work in Orca. A few hours later, it was working flawlessly. A 3D printer that wasn’t supported by Orca is now supported and it just took a few minute’s time.

I know what you’re thinking, “Vibe coding isn’t going to produce solid plugins like this!” and a year ago I would have agreed with you. Today? I disagree wholeheartedly.

While vibe coding might not be at the level of senior developers, it can actually do some pretty great (and clean) coding tasks. The code should still be reviewed by a human and not just merged straight away, but it definitely can do a lot of good in scenarios like this.

I’ve chosen to submit some of these changes as pull requests up to the initial repos and will let the maintainers decide on whether to merge them or not. I, however, think it’s fantastic that, even if they never get merged, I can fix these plugins and apps for my own personal use with ease.

  • FlashForge Creator 5 3D printer.

    Brand

    FlashForge

    Build Volume

    256x256x256mm

    Connectivity

    Wi-Fi

    Heated Build Plate

    Yes, 120C

    Feed Type

    Direct drive

    Dual-Color Printing

    4-color printing

    As FlashForge’s first toolchanger 3D printer, the Creator 5 boasts a lot of unique and powerful features. It can travel at up to 600mm/s with its CoreXY design, and features full auto calibration from start to finish. It also has four independent toolheads that allow it to run four separate colors or materials without the purge waste of traditional multicolor printers.


  • ChatGPT logo on a transparent background

    What’s included?

    Unlimited conversations, faster response speed, priority access, and more

    Brand

    ChatGPT

    ChatGPT’s AI-supported assistance gets even better with a paid subscription; it Plus tier offers enhanced features including unlimited conversations, faster response speed, priority access, and more.


Codex is only getting more powerful

I did all of this while on GPT-5.5 low, and, as of the day that I’m writing this, GPT-5.6 has officially been released. It’s supposed to be way smarter and more capable than GPT-5.5, and I am very excited to dive into it.

Over the past few months, Codex has only gotten more powerful than I ever expected it to become. I use it extensively doing research, writing code, and so much more. It’s such a great tool that I can’t wait to see where the next steps take it.



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Recent Reviews

How to use Excel date functions to automate project timelines


Microsoft Excel handles temporal data effectively if you know which formulas to use. The problem is that Excel includes over 20 date and time functions, but most people only ever need a small core set to build powerful, self-updating workflows. These essential date functions turn messy timelines into automated systems you can actually rely on.

All examples in this guide use an Excel table (Ctrl+T) named ProjectTracker (pictured below). To follow along, download a free copy of the Excel workbook containing this table. After you click the link, you’ll find the download button in the top-right corner of your screen.

A structured Excel tracking table containing project tasks, start dates, and due dates.

Excel views your calendar as a massive string of numbers

The secret logic behind spreadsheet dates

Excel stores dates as serial numbers—starting at January 1, 1900—and displays them using date formats. For example, June 1, 2026 is stored internally as 46174. This allows you to perform arithmetic on dates, such as adding 7 to move forward one week.

Excel intentionally treats 1900 as a leap year for compatibility with older spreadsheet systems. This is not historically accurate, but it rarely affects modern workflows unless you’re working with very old date ranges.

Keep your timelines moving with real-time tracking

Creating a live project countdown with TODAY

If you currently update a “Today” cell manually each morning to keep deadlines accurate, Excel can replace that workflow with a dynamic function that always returns the current date.

To create a live countdown that updates automatically as time passes, add a new column with the following name, formula, and formatting:

Column Name

Days Remaining

Formula

=[@[Due Date]]-TODAY()

Number Format

General

When you press Enter, Excel may automatically format the result as a date instead of a number. That’s why you must select the table column and set the format to General in the Number group of the Home tab.

Each task displays the number of days remaining until its due date, with negative values indicating tasks that are already overdue.

The next time you open the workbook, the calculations will refresh and automatically update based on the new day.

Isolate specific time frames by breaking dates into pieces

Structuring reports with MONTH, YEAR, and WEEKDAY

When working with project schedules, full date values like 2026-07-24 are often too detailed for analysis. You may need to group tasks by month, summarize yearly progress, or identify scheduling issues like weekend start dates.

To extract the month, delete the Days Remaining column, then add a new one with these parameters:

Column Name

Month Due

Formula

=MONTH([@[Due Date]])

Number Format

General

Each task returns a numeric month value, such as 6 for June or 7 for July, making it easier to filter and group tasks by month.

To isolate the year for reporting across longer timelines, simply replace MONTH in the formula above with YEAR:

Column Name

Year Due

Formula

=YEAR([@[Due Date]])

Number Format

General
The numeric year component is successfully calculated for every row in the tracking table in Excel.

To identify scheduling issues, such as tasks that begin on weekends, you need a different approach because weekdays are not stored as simple calendar parts like month or year. Instead, Excel assigns each weekday a numeric position based on a selected system.

Here’s what to do in a new column:

Column Name

Weekday Due

Formula

=WEEKDAY([@[Start Date]], 2)

Number Format

General

With the 2 argument, Excel treats Monday as day 1 and Sunday as day 7. Without this argument, Excel uses its default system where Sunday is treated as day 1 and Saturday as day 7.

Each task now returns a number from 1 to 7, where values 6 and 7 correspond to Saturday and Sunday, making weekend starts easy to identify.

The numeric weekday component is successfully calculated for every row in the tracking table in Excel.

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Calculate exact working durations without the weekend clutter

Using NETWORKDAYS to measure real work time

Calendar-based durations often overstate actual work time. A task running from Friday to Monday appears to take four days, even though only two are working days.

So, to calculate true working days between project milestones, add this column:

Column Name

Working Days

Formula

=NETWORKDAYS([@[Start Date]], [@[Due Date]])

Number Format

General

Excel returns the total number of working days between the start and due dates, counting both endpoints when they fall on working days.

To include holidays, create a separate range containing vacation dates (for example, starting in cell F2). Then, select the first Working Days formula cell, and extend the formula to:

=NETWORKDAYS([@[Start Date]], [@[Due Date]], $F$2:$F$5)

Using absolute references ($) ensures the holiday range does not shift when the formula is filled down the table.

When you press Enter, you’ll see that the calculation now excludes both weekends and holidays.

If your workweek is non-standard, use NETWORKDAYS.INTL to define custom weekend rules.

Map future deadlines and end-of-month cutoffs

Using WORKDAY and EOMONTH for automated scheduling

Beyond tracking existing timelines, Excel can generate future dates based on rules such as working durations and billing cycles.

To calculate a projected completion date based on working days, remove the Due Date column, then add these two columns.

Column 1:

Column Name

Expected Duration

Values

Manually enter the number of working days.

Number Format

General

Column 2:

Column Name

Projected Finish

Formula

=WORKDAY([@[Start Date]], [@[Expected Duration]])

Number Format

Date

Excel returns a date representing the expected completion based on the specified number of working days. It automatically skips weekends and returns the next valid working date.

To calculate billing cutoffs that always land on month-end, use this workflow:

Column Name

Billing Cutoff

Formula

=EOMONTH([@[Start Date]], 0)

Number Format

Date

Excel returns the last day of the month for each task, making billing cycles consistent.

Planning ahead with month-based review dates

Shifting dates across months with EDATE

Not all scheduling problems are about counting days. In real project work, you often work in monthly cycles—such as scheduled reviews, audits, or check-ins that repeat at predictable intervals.

For example, if a project phase starts on a given date, and you need to schedule a formal review three months later, Excel has a built-in function designed exactly for this. EDATE shifts a date by a specified number of months while preserving the day of the month when possible.

Here’s how to use it:

Column Name

Review Date

Formula

=EDATE([@[Start Date]], 3)

Number Format

Date

This moves the start date forward by three full months. For example, if the start date is June 1, 2026, Excel returns September 1, 2026.

You can also move backward in time when planning earlier review checkpoints, such as retrospective checks or pre-launch assessments. In those cases, you use a negative value:

=EDATE([@[Start Date]], -2)

Unlike day-based subtraction, EDATE respects calendar structure, making it more reliable than manually shifting dates.

Take control of your spreadsheet timelines

Ignoring Excel’s built-in date tools often leads to hours of manual updates and fragile spreadsheets. By understanding how Excel stores dates and using functions designed to work with them, you can build schedules that update themselves and forecast future milestones automatically. Once you’ve mastered tracking time with formulas, the next step is visualizing it—turn your data into a dynamic timeline that updates as your project evolves.



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