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His preferred calculator seems fairly close to using ipython which is what I would do.
by bobbyi 17y ago
His preferred calculator seems fairly close to using ipython which is what I would do.
- scott_s 17y agoI use a python REPL as my calculator. I went through many different apps until it hit me that was what I wanted.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoLikewise. It's always open anyway.
- bobbyi 17y agoThe main thing the calculator program seems to have over python is easy unit conversions. Also, I have to admit that python 2's default behavior regarding integer division is not what one expects from a calculator (I expect 3/2 = 1.5).
- scott_s 17y agoSure, but I'm intimately familiar with the semantics of the programming languages I use. It takes the same effort to insure floating point versus integer computations in the Python REPL as it does when writing a Python program - which is not much. I'd rather use my existing knowledge than learn how to interface with something that is probably not as robust or as well designed.
- thegoleffect 17y agoInstacalc.com might be closer to what you want.
- chrischen 17y agoI use wolframalpha, and sometimes maxima.
- kylemathews 17y agoI ran across instacalc.com when looking for linux equivalents of soulver -- very nice web app.
- kalid 17y agoAwesome, glad you're enjoying it!
- joshstaiger 17y agoI switched from Python to R as my calculator of choice for this reason. I only recently discovered that there's a lot more to R than intuitive division of integers ;)
- bad_user 17y agoYeah, but in Python you have other niceties, like dates. Just the other day my pregnant wife asked me to calculate the aprox date she'll give birth (considering she has 17 weeks) ... from datetime import datetime, timedelta print str( datetime.now() + timedelta(weeks=40 - 17) )
- algorias 17y agoThen use python 3.
- DLWormwood 17y agoOn the Mac desktop, I still use a creaky ancient app called MathPad. http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwidholm/MathPad/ http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwidholm/MathPad/ Really served me well in college. I've heard it referred to as a "Poor Man's Mathematica" back in its day. If Soulver worked more like this, I would have bought it by now. That said, I've found that using my iPod touch as a "real world calculator" is much more convenient, and I ended up buying PCalc for it. http://www.pcalc.com/iphone/index.html http://www.pcalc.com/iphone/index.html Being able to tap calculations while walking and pacing the room brainstorming tended to be more useful than being forced to sit down and type at a keyboard.
- chrischen 17y agoMy professor recommended maxima as an alternative to mathematica.
- Groxx 17y agoTried FreeMat yet? It's effectively the "Open Source's Mathematica". I've used it for a couple classes, it handles just about everything. http://freemat.sourceforge.net/ http://freemat.sourceforge.net/
- DLWormwood 17y agoHmmm... looks a little heavyweight, but promising. Thanks for the tip off!
- Periodic 17y agoI didn't realize that was a dedicated calculator application for a few paragraphs. I thought it was just an interactive interpreter for some languages. These days I use irb (Ruby) or ghci (Haskell) for all my calculating needs. For me, defining functions and being able to map and fold are very important.
- squidsoup 17y agoSimilarly, I just use IRB. Languages with interactive shells are great :)
- __david__ 17y agoSame here, except I use an interactive perl loop that grew more and more features until it became pretty awesome: http://porkrind.org/missives/pc-perl-calculator http://porkrind.org/missives/pc-perl-calculator