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My HP 28s calcultor from 1988 (still got it, still works excellently) is programmed in a stack based, Forth + Lisp inspired hybrid language, that was lightyears
by submeta 8y ago
My HP 28s calcultor from 1988 (still got it, still works excellently) is programmed in a stack based, Forth + Lisp inspired hybrid language, that was lightyears ahead of all the concepts, programming languages that I had seen back then (Basic, Pascal, C). It was stack based. I could put data onto the stack and get it from there if needed. It had an excellent REPL. It was working with all kinds of data structures: complex numbers, lists, arrays, matrices. Also, everything was an object. And code could generate code, just like in Lisp.
Only when I learned about Mathematica I found something more powerful in 1988.
- throw9away 8y agoI'm too young for those calculators, unfortunately. But I did pick up a SwissMicros DM42 a while ago. I love it, but I haven't had enough time to properly play with it.
- submeta 8y agoWhat makes me sad is that the latest and most capable calculator from HP (the HP Prime) seems to use something like Pascal. After 30 years they come up with something like Pascal? Instead of what they had in 1988? Back then they used a variant of Lisp: RPL (Reverse Polish Lisp)