This is interesting. One of the first ideas I had for an app was a calculator that represented digits like shown in the article but allowed you to write them w

This is interesting. One of the first ideas I had for an app was a calculator that represented digits like shown in the article but allowed you to write them with variables and toggle between symbolic and actual responses. A use case would be: in a spreadsheet like interface you could verify if the operations produced the final equation you were modeling in order to help validate if the number was correct or not. I had a TI-89 that could do something close and even in 2006 that was not exactly brand new tech. I figured surely some open source library available on the desktop must get me close. I was wildly wrong. I stuck with programming but abandoned the calculator idea. Even nearly 20 years later, such a task doesn’t seem that much easier to me.