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The original intention of computers was to perform calculations. The inclusion of facilities that allow for calculations to be performed on a computer is ironic

The original intention of computers was to perform calculations. The inclusion of facilities that allow for calculations to be performed on a computer is ironic how? That seems like thinking it ironic that lawn mowers have a place to put blades for cutting grass.

dijit 6y ago
I agree with the parent because creating code which runs arbitrary calculations is quite weird. You would assume you could just send instructions to the CPU and print the output. The idea that there’s a huge wrapper around the CPUs core functionality is indeed weird because you would expect that functionality to be available without any program at all.
anthk 6y ago
I think your parent comment meant computers are calculators themselves since forever.
qsort 6y ago
> That seems like thinking it ironic that lawn mowers have a place to put blades for cutting grass. A more apt analogy in this case would be a car having pedals.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
The irony is more so the unnecessary skeuomorphism, that, inside of a machine that is a strict superset in capabilities of another, simulates the limited interface of the latter machine to make it “look and feel” as though it be an actual calculator. Obviously, a prompt that accepts arbitrarily complicated mathematical expressions and returns a value is a far superior interface than clicking on buttons with a mouse, but skeuomorphisms in design are very common place, in spite of their lesser efficiency.
pdpi 6y ago
The purpose of computers is to perform calculations. Then we built a massive pile of abstractions on top of that souped-up calculator to make it into a general purpose machine. Then we built a small calculator app on top of those abstractions. A lot of work to get back to square one. (This obviously misses the point that we made computers usable by mostly anybody along the way, but it’s still funny)
- wruza 6y ago
  As someone who sat alongside when my granddad soldered 8080 clone to the board, entered commands via switches, and seen binary results on a LED display (not a modern LED display, but literally a row of 8 red Light Emitting Diodes, you know) I tell you with a great confidence that clacking 1+2x3 on a keyboard and seeing an answer on SVGA+ screen is much quicker and more convenient than: - planning a program - implementing missing mul and/or shl instructions in your mind - managing register pressure for more complex expressions - having to start from scratch on a mistake - debugging with a multimeter Even if you think of MBR-style calculator, there is at least dozen kb BIOS and dozen kb VGA BIOS to start with a blank screen that can do cursor and digits. There is nothing cheap or straightforward down there, and the first thing people did was abstracting baremetal away ASAFP.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  That only seems to explain why it could seem odd to buy an entire desktop PC to only ever use it as a basic calculator. In that case, it might make more sense to just buy a calculator. But there's certainly nothing odd about buying a general purpose computer and then use it for lots of different specific purposes, one of which is numerical calculation.
- contextfree 6y ago
  One way of thinking of it is that a physical calculator has two parts - the circuitry that performs the calculations and the UI - in the form of physical buttons, displays, and the connections between them and the calculation circuitry - that allows people to effectively make use of it for their calculating needs. A modern CPU has got the calculation part covered by itself, but it still needs the UI. Of course there are other kinds of UI for people to do calculations - for example Excel, or programming language REPLs - but desk calculators had pretty good UI for some use cases, so it makes sense to have an option based on them.
cptskippy 6y ago
> That seems like thinking it ironic that lawn mowers have a place to put blades for cutting grass. A more apt comparison would be having a 40ft tall Mech that transforms into a jet and flies from neighborhood to neighborhood then crouches down and uses a tiny pair of scissors to cut the grass.
- hoten 6y ago
  Given computers are nothing but a mind-bogging amount of very simple operations (add, mov, whatever on fixed size values), I'd suggest an equally apt comparison is that a computer is billions of nanobots cutting grass one blade at a time, and the calculator app is the Mech.
mrb 6y ago
I suppose what he meant is it's ironic due to the insane overhead. When the end-user double clicks calc.exe, types in 1+1, and sees the result on the screen, the CPU has executed on the order of tens of millions of instructions (filesystem code, OS code, UI code, display driver code, etc) to show a simple result that could have been done in a single x86-64 ADD instruction.
- abraae 6y ago
  Consider what happens when you type in "= 1 + 1" in the Google search bar then.
  - mrb 6y ago
    shudders ;)
megablast 6y ago
This might be the Sheri an version of ironic, which includes anything a bit funny, or weird, or they can’t think of a term for. Like rain on your wedding day.

dijit 6y ago

I agree with the parent because creating code which runs arbitrary calculations is quite weird. You would assume you could just send instructions to the CPU and print the output. The idea that there’s a huge wrapper around the CPUs core functionality is indeed weird because you would expect that functionality to be available without any program at all.

anthk 6y ago

I think your parent comment meant computers are calculators themselves since forever.

qsort 6y ago

> That seems like thinking it ironic that lawn mowers have a place to put blades for cutting grass. A more apt analogy in this case would be a car having pedals.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

The irony is more so the unnecessary skeuomorphism, that, inside of a machine that is a strict superset in capabilities of another, simulates the limited interface of the latter machine to make it “look and feel” as though it be an actual calculator. Obviously, a prompt that accepts arbitrarily complicated mathematical expressions and returns a value is a far superior interface than clicking on buttons with a mouse, but skeuomorphisms in design are very common place, in spite of their lesser efficiency.

pdpi 6y ago

The purpose of computers is to perform calculations. Then we built a massive pile of abstractions on top of that souped-up calculator to make it into a general purpose machine. Then we built a small calculator app on top of those abstractions. A lot of work to get back to square one. (This obviously misses the point that we made computers usable by mostly anybody along the way, but it’s still funny)

wruza 6y ago
As someone who sat alongside when my granddad soldered 8080 clone to the board, entered commands via switches, and seen binary results on a LED display (not a modern LED display, but literally a row of 8 red Light Emitting Diodes, you know) I tell you with a great confidence that clacking 1+2x3 on a keyboard and seeing an answer on SVGA+ screen is much quicker and more convenient than: - planning a program - implementing missing mul and/or shl instructions in your mind - managing register pressure for more complex expressions - having to start from scratch on a mistake - debugging with a multimeter Even if you think of MBR-style calculator, there is at least dozen kb BIOS and dozen kb VGA BIOS to start with a blank screen that can do cursor and digits. There is nothing cheap or straightforward down there, and the first thing people did was abstracting baremetal away ASAFP.
tshaddox 6y ago
That only seems to explain why it could seem odd to buy an entire desktop PC to only ever use it as a basic calculator. In that case, it might make more sense to just buy a calculator. But there's certainly nothing odd about buying a general purpose computer and then use it for lots of different specific purposes, one of which is numerical calculation.
contextfree 6y ago
One way of thinking of it is that a physical calculator has two parts - the circuitry that performs the calculations and the UI - in the form of physical buttons, displays, and the connections between them and the calculation circuitry - that allows people to effectively make use of it for their calculating needs. A modern CPU has got the calculation part covered by itself, but it still needs the UI. Of course there are other kinds of UI for people to do calculations - for example Excel, or programming language REPLs - but desk calculators had pretty good UI for some use cases, so it makes sense to have an option based on them.

cptskippy 6y ago

> That seems like thinking it ironic that lawn mowers have a place to put blades for cutting grass. A more apt comparison would be having a 40ft tall Mech that transforms into a jet and flies from neighborhood to neighborhood then crouches down and uses a tiny pair of scissors to cut the grass.

hoten 6y ago
Given computers are nothing but a mind-bogging amount of very simple operations (add, mov, whatever on fixed size values), I'd suggest an equally apt comparison is that a computer is billions of nanobots cutting grass one blade at a time, and the calculator app is the Mech.

mrb 6y ago

I suppose what he meant is it's ironic due to the insane overhead. When the end-user double clicks calc.exe, types in 1+1, and sees the result on the screen, the CPU has executed on the order of tens of millions of instructions (filesystem code, OS code, UI code, display driver code, etc) to show a simple result that could have been done in a single x86-64 ADD instruction.

abraae 6y ago
Consider what happens when you type in "= 1 + 1" in the Google search bar then.
- mrb 6y ago
  shudders ;)

megablast 6y ago

This might be the Sheri an version of ironic, which includes anything a bit funny, or weird, or they can’t think of a term for. Like rain on your wedding day.