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I'm a calculator nut who has had many fancy TI (like the Voyage 200) and HP calculators (yes RPN) including the SwissMicro reproductions. The ONLY benefit to t

I'm a calculator nut who has had many fancy TI (like the Voyage 200) and HP calculators (yes RPN) including the SwissMicro reproductions. The ONLY benefit to these tools that I can surmise is basically that they are a physical device for scientists or others in the lab or field and not in front of a computer. For any kind of data work I've seen, Excel, R, Python, Mathematica, or Matlab are all vastly superior. They allow faster entry, can show large amounts of data on screen, can allow for saving large amounts of data ...etc.

exe34 2y ago
yeah after a decade in my job, I have a ton of utility functions in python that I reach for when given a new request to think through something. I doubt a smaller screen where I have to type in stuff and then copy out results would make it any easier.
- jwr 2y ago
  This thread is making my point for me rather well.
  - exe34 2y ago
    yes a lot of people love them, but nobody's actually coming up with anything I can't do in python...
    - jwr 2y ago
      You can do everything in Python. But perhaps it is not the best tool for every job. This is similar to programming language discussions: any programming language can be discredited by saying "but I can do all that in assembly/C/whatever". Yes, you can, but perhaps there are better ways to do it.
      - exe34 2y ago
        usually with programming languages, we mention certain things - like how python is easier to read, it's almost like English. it comes with dozens of well designed built-in libraries to do a lot of useful things, and thousands of external libraries to do the rest - even gluing together c/Fortran code for the speedup. it's well supported on many platforms so you can design on one comfortable os environment and deploy in a scalable one. for the engineering calculators, it seems the advantage is that some people learnt to use them in school and really love using them? that's great, I'm tempted to look into them myself, because it does sound cool to have a small device that does that sort of thing while I'm reading a book. but the truth is that for me, both at work and at home, my laptop is never more than 5 seconds away from showing me a repl, so maybe I'm not the target audience.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      When all you have is a hammer arguments are so much fun
      - exe34 2y ago
        every now and again, I download the user manual for a graphing calculator and every time I've been underwhelmed by what they have to offer. What impresses me in this discussion is how coy everybody has been about the actual benefits of these devices.
        dylan604 2y ago
        What impresses me is how you dismiss the usefulness to other people because you can't imagine it possibly being useful to someone because it's not useful to you
        exe34 2y ago
        I don't believe I've done that? I've said it doesn't appear that it would be useful to me - and I keep asking, probably for the 5th time now, in what way is it useful? The most cogent reply I've had so far is "0.85f’c". I don't know what that means. Please, could you explain? At this point I feel that even Apple fanboys put more effort in justifying their choices.
        dylan604 2y ago
        Do you like pen or pencil? Do you like college rule or wide rule paper? Do you like spiral or perf notebooks? I don't need to justify my reasoning to you in a way that convinces you your way is wrong and mine is right. People like different things. I learned to use a scientific calculator as an extracurricular competition that allowed me to become very proficient at 10-key. Because of that, doing calculations on a computer goes against muscle memory. Laptops don't even have a 10-key. If I have a bunch of notes/papers with numbers that need to be added, I can pull out a calculator and just do the data entry and get a result. I don't have to go to my computer, or lug the laptop around in the shop. I just need numbers quickly crunched so I can then turn around and make a cut, drill a hole, or whatever. I don't need a large clunky compute device for that. Dropping a calculator on the shop floor is much less expensive than doing the same with a laptop. Lots of time, I just don't feel like needing to write a damn script just to get the tangent/cosine of a value to determine the lengths of the whatever. Again, just because you have a hammer doesn't mean that you should use it drive that screw. Sometimes that tool that specifically made for purpose is better for the task at hand. Now, pick any of the aforementioned options as to why I might prefer a calculator over a programming env just to crunch some numbers.
    - c3d 2y ago
      Let's see your Python answers to the following examples: 1. What happens if I rotate binary pattern 1001 right by 3 positions on a 18-bit PDP-9? RPL code: 18 STWS 2#1001 3 RRC Result: #8001 in base 16, #1000 0000 0000 0001 in base 2. What about if I do this on 6 36-bit words? RPL code: 6 36 * STWS 2#1001 3 RRC Result: #20 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 2. What is the symbolic expression of the determinant of some 2x2 matrix? Program: [[1 y]['2+x' b]] DET Answer: 'b-(x+2)·y' (shows graphically on calculator screen) 3. What is the output voltage of a voltage divider with input voltage 100V, R1=4kΩ, R2=10Ω Program: R1=4_kΩ R2=10_Ω V=100_V 'ROOT(ⒺVolt Divider;[V1];[1_V])' EVAL Result: [ V1=99.75 V ] Note that ⒺVolt Divider is a built-in equation, but you can of course put your own. 4. Verify if Ramanujan constant exp(sqrt(163)*pi) is an integer. Program: « 'exp(√ 163·Ⓒπ)'60 PRECISION →Num FractionalPart » Result: -7.50E⁻¹³, so no, not an integer, but really close 5. Verify Maxwell's value for the speed of light, epsilon0 * mu0 * c^2 = 1. Program: '(√(Ⓒε0·Ⓒμ0))⁻¹' →Num Result: 299 792 458.00 m/(F↑(¹/₂)·H↑(¹/₂)) Convert to SI units: UBASE Result: 299 792 458. m/s Convert to feet per second: ³⁷⁴ ⁷⁴⁰ ⁵⁷² ⁵⁰⁰/₃₈₁ ft/s or 983 571 056.43 ft/s. (if you subtract the Ⓒc constant, you get -0.00031 11057 21 m/s) 6. Check the Collatz conjecture on 989345275647 Program: « if dup 1 ≠ then if dup 2 mod then 3 × 1 + else 2 ÷ end Collatz end » 'Collatz' STO 989345275647 Collatz Result: 1 (conjecture is verified) 7. Given that it's now Nov 7, 00:07:51 and that a program I started on Nov 1st at 23:15:27 just finished, how long did it run? Program: 20241107.000751_date 20241101.231527_date - 1_h convert UVAL →HMS Result: 120:52:24 (the "1_h convert UVAL →HMS" should really just be →HMS, but at the moment, →HMS is not smart enough to convert from days)
hggigg 2y ago
Some of us (mathematics side) still actually work on paper with calculators. Most of the job is thinking which tooling doesn’t necessarily improve.
- zokier 2y ago
  > Most of the job is thinking which tooling doesn’t necessarily improve yet you use paper and calculator.
  - hggigg 2y ago
    near the end of the thinking yes.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    That's like a carpenter saying it only took 10 seconds to make that cut while ignoring the 3 hours it took to create the jig so the cut would take 10 seconds. You don't need the calculator to do the final sums until you've done all of the work gathering all of the data that needs to be calculated. It doesn't mean the calculator wasn't needed, just that it's only needed for one thing not every step along the way. This wasn't the gotcha you think it was
SirHumphrey 2y ago
I don’t use the physical HP50G i have that often, but i love it emulated on the phone. It’s for semi complicated quick calculations where scientific calculator interface really shines compared to anything else available.
- jwr 2y ago
  What emulator do you use? I'd really like to run HP50G on iOS, but the only emulator I know was abandoned years ago (I got the source just in case, but it's a lot of work to fix the issues and build it).
  - SirHumphrey 2y ago
    Yeah, turns out i mistyped a bit. The emulated one is not 50G but HP49G+ (i use iHP48 app to do it)

exe34 2y ago

yeah after a decade in my job, I have a ton of utility functions in python that I reach for when given a new request to think through something. I doubt a smaller screen where I have to type in stuff and then copy out results would make it any easier.

jwr 2y ago
This thread is making my point for me rather well.
- exe34 2y ago
  yes a lot of people love them, but nobody's actually coming up with anything I can't do in python...
  - jwr 2y ago
    You can do everything in Python. But perhaps it is not the best tool for every job. This is similar to programming language discussions: any programming language can be discredited by saying "but I can do all that in assembly/C/whatever". Yes, you can, but perhaps there are better ways to do it.
    - exe34 2y ago
      usually with programming languages, we mention certain things - like how python is easier to read, it's almost like English. it comes with dozens of well designed built-in libraries to do a lot of useful things, and thousands of external libraries to do the rest - even gluing together c/Fortran code for the speedup. it's well supported on many platforms so you can design on one comfortable os environment and deploy in a scalable one. for the engineering calculators, it seems the advantage is that some people learnt to use them in school and really love using them? that's great, I'm tempted to look into them myself, because it does sound cool to have a small device that does that sort of thing while I'm reading a book. but the truth is that for me, both at work and at home, my laptop is never more than 5 seconds away from showing me a repl, so maybe I'm not the target audience.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    When all you have is a hammer arguments are so much fun
    - exe34 2y ago
      every now and again, I download the user manual for a graphing calculator and every time I've been underwhelmed by what they have to offer. What impresses me in this discussion is how coy everybody has been about the actual benefits of these devices.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        What impresses me is how you dismiss the usefulness to other people because you can't imagine it possibly being useful to someone because it's not useful to you
        exe34 2y ago
        I don't believe I've done that? I've said it doesn't appear that it would be useful to me - and I keep asking, probably for the 5th time now, in what way is it useful? The most cogent reply I've had so far is "0.85f’c". I don't know what that means. Please, could you explain? At this point I feel that even Apple fanboys put more effort in justifying their choices.
        dylan604 2y ago
        Do you like pen or pencil? Do you like college rule or wide rule paper? Do you like spiral or perf notebooks? I don't need to justify my reasoning to you in a way that convinces you your way is wrong and mine is right. People like different things. I learned to use a scientific calculator as an extracurricular competition that allowed me to become very proficient at 10-key. Because of that, doing calculations on a computer goes against muscle memory. Laptops don't even have a 10-key. If I have a bunch of notes/papers with numbers that need to be added, I can pull out a calculator and just do the data entry and get a result. I don't have to go to my computer, or lug the laptop around in the shop. I just need numbers quickly crunched so I can then turn around and make a cut, drill a hole, or whatever. I don't need a large clunky compute device for that. Dropping a calculator on the shop floor is much less expensive than doing the same with a laptop. Lots of time, I just don't feel like needing to write a damn script just to get the tangent/cosine of a value to determine the lengths of the whatever. Again, just because you have a hammer doesn't mean that you should use it drive that screw. Sometimes that tool that specifically made for purpose is better for the task at hand. Now, pick any of the aforementioned options as to why I might prefer a calculator over a programming env just to crunch some numbers.
  - c3d 2y ago
    Let's see your Python answers to the following examples: 1. What happens if I rotate binary pattern 1001 right by 3 positions on a 18-bit PDP-9? RPL code: 18 STWS 2#1001 3 RRC Result: #8001 in base 16, #1000 0000 0000 0001 in base 2. What about if I do this on 6 36-bit words? RPL code: 6 36 * STWS 2#1001 3 RRC Result: #20 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 2. What is the symbolic expression of the determinant of some 2x2 matrix? Program: [[1 y]['2+x' b]] DET Answer: 'b-(x+2)·y' (shows graphically on calculator screen) 3. What is the output voltage of a voltage divider with input voltage 100V, R1=4kΩ, R2=10Ω Program: R1=4_kΩ R2=10_Ω V=100_V 'ROOT(ⒺVolt Divider;[V1];[1_V])' EVAL Result: [ V1=99.75 V ] Note that ⒺVolt Divider is a built-in equation, but you can of course put your own. 4. Verify if Ramanujan constant exp(sqrt(163)*pi) is an integer. Program: « 'exp(√ 163·Ⓒπ)'60 PRECISION →Num FractionalPart » Result: -7.50E⁻¹³, so no, not an integer, but really close 5. Verify Maxwell's value for the speed of light, epsilon0 * mu0 * c^2 = 1. Program: '(√(Ⓒε0·Ⓒμ0))⁻¹' →Num Result: 299 792 458.00 m/(F↑(¹/₂)·H↑(¹/₂)) Convert to SI units: UBASE Result: 299 792 458. m/s Convert to feet per second: ³⁷⁴ ⁷⁴⁰ ⁵⁷² ⁵⁰⁰/₃₈₁ ft/s or 983 571 056.43 ft/s. (if you subtract the Ⓒc constant, you get -0.00031 11057 21 m/s) 6. Check the Collatz conjecture on 989345275647 Program: « if dup 1 ≠ then if dup 2 mod then 3 × 1 + else 2 ÷ end Collatz end » 'Collatz' STO 989345275647 Collatz Result: 1 (conjecture is verified) 7. Given that it's now Nov 7, 00:07:51 and that a program I started on Nov 1st at 23:15:27 just finished, how long did it run? Program: 20241107.000751_date 20241101.231527_date - 1_h convert UVAL →HMS Result: 120:52:24 (the "1_h convert UVAL →HMS" should really just be →HMS, but at the moment, →HMS is not smart enough to convert from days)

hggigg 2y ago

Some of us (mathematics side) still actually work on paper with calculators. Most of the job is thinking which tooling doesn’t necessarily improve.

zokier 2y ago
> Most of the job is thinking which tooling doesn’t necessarily improve yet you use paper and calculator.
- hggigg 2y ago
  near the end of the thinking yes.
- dylan604 2y ago
  That's like a carpenter saying it only took 10 seconds to make that cut while ignoring the 3 hours it took to create the jig so the cut would take 10 seconds. You don't need the calculator to do the final sums until you've done all of the work gathering all of the data that needs to be calculated. It doesn't mean the calculator wasn't needed, just that it's only needed for one thing not every step along the way. This wasn't the gotcha you think it was

SirHumphrey 2y ago

I don’t use the physical HP50G i have that often, but i love it emulated on the phone. It’s for semi complicated quick calculations where scientific calculator interface really shines compared to anything else available.

jwr 2y ago
What emulator do you use? I'd really like to run HP50G on iOS, but the only emulator I know was abandoned years ago (I got the source just in case, but it's a lot of work to fix the issues and build it).
- SirHumphrey 2y ago
  Yeah, turns out i mistyped a bit. The emulated one is not 50G but HP49G+ (i use iHP48 app to do it)