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Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

191 points by adi_hn07 2y ago

I figured I needed to work on my coding skills before building the next groundbreaking AI app, so I started working on this free tool site. Its basically just an aggregation of various commonly used calculators and unit convertors. Link: https://www.calcverse.live https://www.calcverse.live Tech Stack: Next, React, Typescript, shadcn UI, Tailwind CSS Would greatly appreciate your feedback on the UI/UX and accessibilty. I struggled the most with navigation. I've added a search box, a sidebar, breadcrumbs and pages with grids of cards leading to the respective calculator or unit convertor, but not sure if this is good enough.

myles-hn 2y ago
Same. But mine was an android app. github.com/crouther
tonetheman 2y ago
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kstrauser 2y ago
Where’s the math actually done, on device or on your server? Feedback: the compound interest calculator doesn’t support continual compounding? That’s surprising, and also the easiest to compute.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I must admit I still don't understand continual compounding
  - Xelynega 2y ago
    Explained in a terrible way, it's integrals for interest if "compound daily/monthly/yearly" was an estimation using discrete intervals
    - skeeter2020 2y ago
      you didn't really improve by hiding behind "integrals"; this is why so many kids are afraid of calculus.
      - triyambakam 2y ago
        The explanation worked for me. I learned basic calculus but didn't know about continual compounding interest.
      - inopinatus 2y ago
        this isn’t kindergarten. if something is described concisely by analysis then that’s how I want it explained to me too.
      - Xelynega 2y ago
        There's a reason I prefaced it with "explained in a terrible way". It clicks that way in my head, might for others
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Imagine that instead of compounding the interest every day, you wanted to calculate it every nanosecond. And then, every billionth of a nanosecond. If you keep dividing that until it’s an infinite number of infinitely small compounding, you get a super simple equation: interest = e^(years*rate) 10% interest for 5 years? e^(5*.1) = 1.649 3% for 8 years? e^(8*.03) = 1.271 You can plug any numbers into that and get the end result in 1 step.
  - afthonos 2y ago
    Sibling’s explanation is a great starting point! If you understand annual, weekly, and daily compounding, continuous compounding is the limit of what happens when the time you compound over becomes ever shorter. It’s not obvious without calculus, but it’s a well-defined function.
ysofunny 2y ago
https://planetcalc.com/ https://planetcalc.com/
- lm28469 2y ago
  and https://www.omnicalculator.com https://www.omnicalculator.com
deleted 2y ago
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4887d30omd8 2y ago
You're not the only one. I recently took up running and didn't particularly like any of the existing running pace calculators, so I made my own: https://calcubest.com/health/runningpace https://calcubest.com/health/runningpace And then kinda realized that there were others I wanted to have, and a few I thought others might want, so I added more. A calculator is simple enough that it's fun to work on one when I need a break from something more complex but want to be able to do something other than doom scrolling. So now every couple of weeks I add another one.
- megadata 2y ago
  To anyone thinking of starting running but either doesn't know where to start or thinks he can't do it, look up "couch to 5k". It's a free NHS audio program that guides your phase so that in 9 weeks you can do a 5k run.
  - 4887d30omd8 2y ago
    I can second this. That's the program I started with. I'm now training for a half marathon using https://www.baa.org/races/baa-half-marathon/train/leveltwo https://www.baa.org/races/baa-half-marathon/train/leveltwo and I've shaved like a minute off my mile pace while increasing my milage from 6 mile runs to 12 mile runs. There's lots of programs for running and most of them seem good for improving performance.
    - anshumankmr 2y ago
      No strength training in this?? I have been training legs for years along with runs (treadmill runs/uphill runs etc)... only problem my timing for the half marathon has gone down from 2h35 to 2h38 and then I had an accident last year which made me unable to run most of the second half of last year which has made things a lot tougher for me to train :(
jrockway 2y ago
I like `units` for unit conversion. It's in the default install of MacOS, so readily accessible for most people.
redbell 2y ago
Somehow related: “A calculator app? Anyone could make that”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953
stanleykm 2y ago
One calculator I’ve come to love over the years is Numi. I keep it open all day every day and it does a pretty good job of bridging the gap between the typical skewmorphic calculator app and scilab or python. It’s a text based calculator that allows you to declare variables and do unit and base conversions and save and load your work. No graphing though unfortunately and i dont think it really has much in the way of plugin support. Anyway not to say your calculators arent useful op, i just think that something that can be open on the desktop is more useful than something that is hidden in a chrome browser tab.
- lubujackson 2y ago
  Haven't tried Numi, but I made a calculator with variables as a side project on a whim: https://calc.li/ https://calc.li/ - it is online, but there is no backend and you can save the whole page as an offline file if you want, using localStorage for state.
  - ay 2y ago
    Typing “2”, “+”, “3” on an iPhone in Safari gets it to display “23+”, which doesn’t appear correct to me ? Looks cute otherwise.
- saransh29 2y ago
  I also love numi on my mac! a similar online alternative is https://numbr.dev/ https://numbr.dev/
bityard 2y ago
If you're taking suggestions, I have a frequent need to do basic arithmetic on fractions and not many "app" calculators do that well or at all.
- akkartik 2y ago
  This is very different, but check out my https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/notebook.love https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/notebook.love
  - bityard 2y ago
    I don't have an immediate use for it, but I quite like it!
    - akkartik 2y ago
      Me neither and me too! Thanks :)
- neilv 2y ago
  On the desktop, if you keep a Scheme interpreter installed, you can use it as a quick arbitrary-precision calculator, including support for fractions. Guile is the most easily available one on a Linux system, though some others will give better REPL out of the box. $ guile GNU Guile 3.0.8 Copyright (C) 1995-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Guile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `,show w'. This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `,show c' for details. Enter `,help' for help. scheme@(guile-user)> (+ 1/2 1/8 1/8) $1 = 3/4 scheme@(guile-user)> (* $1 1/2) $2 = 3/8 scheme@(guile-user)> (define rate 42) scheme@(guile-user)> (* rate $2) $3 = 63/4 scheme@(guile-user)> (define (foo x) (- x 1/32)) scheme@(guile-user)> (foo $3) $4 = 503/32 scheme@(guile-user)> (exact->inexact $4) $5 = 15.71875 scheme@(guile-user)> You can also run a Scheme REPL within Emacs, with `M-x run-scheme RET`. Optionally with Quack. https://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/
  - deleted 2y ago
ikhare 2y ago
On the topic of calculators. I discovered Figr[1] on HN a while ago, and it really helps when doing one off multi variable thing, like helping a customer estimate their bill etc. Kudos on building this. I occasionally search for these on Google and am always disappointed by the mess. Bookmarked. [1] https://www.figr.app/ https://www.figr.app/
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thank you so much for the bookmark! Means a lot. Figr looks great, will take inspiration and guidance from it. Thanks for the suggestion.
bvanderveen 2y ago
A random dimensional analysis that I find amusing about fuel consumption units: liters / 100 km => m^3 / m => m^2 (volume) / (distance) => (area) This can be interpreted as the cross-sectional area of a hypothetical trough of fuel running alongside the road, whose contents you slurp up and consume in your engine as you pass (in lieu of using fuel stored in an onboard reservoir).
- chrismorgan 2y ago
  Another really fun one, though slightly less literal than L/100km, is charging rates in electric vehicles, which often present charge state as range (km), rather than energy stored (kWh); and so if it takes you one hour to gain 300km of range, well… you were charging at a rate of 300km/h. (With in-flight refueling, you could potentially refuel an aeroplane at 300km/h at 300km/h…) Related: Uncanceled Units <https://xkcd.com/3038/ https://xkcd.com/3038/>. (“50 gallons per square foot” especially is similar to your L/100km: volume ÷ area = length.)
noduerme 2y ago
This is great. I really think that having a theme to iterate on is the best way of revisiting coding/math skills and learning new ones. And building things from scratch is so much more rewarding than snapping parts together. My free time right now is trying to rewrite 90s screensavers down to the rasterizer level, without consulting anything for how to do stuff like antialiasing. One little note, just checking out your loan calculator: On my phone, the total interest div is cut off at the decimal point, and the total payment overflows the nice round rect holder. You could dial in the font size scaling with a bit of custom Javascript there. They stand out, too, because they're bottom line figures.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thanks a lot for the feedback! I have fixed the issue, please let me know if you want any further changes.
BigParm 2y ago
This is dope
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thanks :)
wendyshu 2y ago
Can't Wolfram Alpha do this?
rishikeshs 2y ago
I started something similar recently: https://calcbun.com https://calcbun.com They key is finding unique calculators.
lelandfe 2y ago
If I calculate something, hit back in my history, and then return, what I had entered is wiped out. If I enter text into this HN comment box, hit back in my history, and then return, what I've typed is maintained.
karparov 2y ago
A suggestion for your speed converter: different sports use different units which your converter could support as well. A few examples: Running usually measures pace in minutes per kilometer or mile. That will be extra fun for you since it wouldn't be 4.33333 min/km but would be written as sth like 4:20 min/km. Swimming uses min/100m or sec/100m. Rowing uses min/500m. If you add these then I'd be using this a lot!
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thanks for the great feedback! I've added pace units to the speed convertor, do check it out and let me know if you need any changes. You can send all requests at the contact form on the site too: https://www.calcverse.live/contact https://www.calcverse.live/contact Will aim to implement it within 24 hrs. Thanks again!
aredox 2y ago
AI can't calculate anyway, so, you're doing good.
- gjs278 2y ago
  [dead]
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Good to hear that :)
opem 2y ago
Loved the title! XD
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Its good to hear that :)
4ndrewl 2y ago
Loser. I bet you missed out on the metaverse. And blockchain. Seriously, this is great - solving problems for users seems to be hugely underrated here.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Good thing I missed out on metaverse and blockchain, or I'd be in debt. Seriously, I have optimism about them too, just not jumping on that train yet. Thanks for the feedback :)
Uptrenda 2y ago
inspiring in a weird way. maybe there is hope for engineering afterall.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Happy to fight for engineering, any day :)
chrismorgan 2y ago
Some comments, based purely on https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/bmi https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/bmi. • Keyboard accessibility is suffering, because the buttons aren’t associated with a form. Most notably, pressing Enter when one of the text boxes is selected doesn’t do anything. You should put everything inside a <form> element, and then if you’re using <button>, decide whether it’s type=button or type=submit. • A tad more subjective, but actual radio buttons are better than the buttons you’ve used for Metric/Imperial. • As it stands, they lack a keyboard focus indication. (And the submit button has poor focus indication.) • People don’t talk about heights in inches. They talk about them in feet and inches. You want to be able to accept feet and inches as two separate inputs. Not everyone who knows that their height is X′Y″ knows that means 12X+Y inches, and even more will make a mistake in calculating that, or just give up. • If you switch between metric and imperial, and there’s a number in height or weight, it should probably convert the number to the chosen scale. • If you just recalculated on input rather than on submit click, the experience would probably be smoother. • Colour contrast on “Category: Overweight” is definitely too low. “Category: Normal weight” is also a little too low; underweight and obese are fine. • Consider sometimes what related information might be useful. Every BMI calculator lists the categories, but something I somehow haven’t ever seen and yet which would be very useful for giving someone something to aim for is a mapping: for a given height, what weights do the categories correspond to? e.g. for 200cm, underweight = 0–74kg, normal weight = 74–100kg, overweight = 100–120kg, obese = 120–∞kg. Consider visualisations too. And mentioning what the calculation actually is that is being performed. Calculations are simple. Presenting them well is the harder bit.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'll take some time to go through these points and fix the issues, and will revert back here asap.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  I have implemented most points, except the 2nd and last ones. I felt its better to have buttons as they are easier to click. I'm figuring out how to implement the last point.
newbie578 2y ago
On wide screens the app is not centered, add some margin auto.
hkt 2y ago
Bless you. Keep fighting the good fight.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Will keep fighting.
ninalanyon 2y ago
BMI calculators are dangerous tools in uncritical hands. Here is a link to the UK NHS page that provides such a calculator but only after it has described some of the limitations: https://www.nhs.uk/health-assessment-tools/calculate-your-body-mass-index/ https://www.nhs.uk/health-assessment-tools/calculate-your-bo...
- megadata 2y ago
  Yep, according to BMI, Schwarzenegger has always been obese af.
fragmede 2y ago
A tiny bit of feedback, for you about unit conversion. I don't want to convert 47383974 seconds to hours, I want to know that it's 1 year, 6 months, 0 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes, and 18 seconds. I don't want to know that 7492837 inches. that's 624,403.0833 feet, but what I really want is for it to say 118 miles, 454 yards, 1 foot, and 1 inch!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
imcritic 2y ago
I tried your interest calculator and it fails. Maybe because it accepts duration in years and I've specified 0.5 (with quarterly payouts). I didn't get any errors, just the wrong result (0). I think the main problem is the poor choice of units: user should be able to select even days as units, not just months/quarters.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thanks a lot for reporting this! I have fixed the issue, and improved the ui of the result given by the calculator. Do let me know if there are any more changes you would like to see.
  - imcritic 2y ago
    I don't see the issue being fixed: try to calculate investment of $1M with 20% annual interest for a loan with 0.5y duration. The calc says the income would be 0.
markus_zhang 2y ago
Good work. I for a second thought they are physical ones.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Thanks! Yup, its natural to think of that at first, that would be even more fun :)
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    BTW I have always been thinking about making some native apps in the spirit of Borland Sidekick -- a lot of small, native apps that a programmer can use, or a business man can use.
deleted 2y ago
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Jeremy1026 2y ago
All of these calculators, and not one basic math calculator.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  We have slide rules for that.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  There is a basic math calculator: https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/basic https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/basic Do let me know if you want to see any changes in it.
  - Jeremy1026 2y ago
    Ah! Sure is. I missed the sidebar when I looked through. Overall this is very nice. I typically use omnicalculator, this is a nice fresh look compared to that tool.
    - adi_hn07 2y ago
      Thanks! If you need a new calculator, need to report a bug or any improvements I can make, you can reach out on the contact form on the site too: https://www.calcverse.live/contact https://www.calcverse.live/contact I aim to fulfil requests within 24 hrs on an average.
airstrike 2y ago
You could ride the AI hype by turning these calculators into something LLMs can represent, then having them build them declaratively, then have another model test and rate the calculators repeatedly providing feedback... and 6 months later have the best calculator ever: the HP-12c
simplecto 2y ago
Hahaha. There is something in the aether today. I just posted here about my own similar tool, but doing it with REST apis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173022
nicbou 2y ago
That's a nice, clean website. Well done! I create calculators in support of the guides I write for immigrants.[0] They are a great way to turn 10 pages of text into a simple form with a clear output. I'm a big fan of them, especially when you add advice to the output. A bit of advice + opinions: - The fields look grayed out and disabled. Using a traditional white background would make more sense. - You should explain what the calculator does, why it matters, and how to interpret the output. This confers some SEO benefits, too. - The age calculator would be easier to find as a difference-between-two-dates calculators. It would be cool to have a reverse "X days ago" calculator. I use both often, and most of the top options suck. - Set some maximum line widths. It helps readability. [0]: https://allaboutberlin.com/tools https://allaboutberlin.com/tools
anentropic 2y ago
FYI the word is "converter" not "convertor" https://www.dictionary.com/browse/converter https://www.dictionary.com/browse/converter
- rossdavidh 2y ago
  Looks like both spellings are used: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/converter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/converter
  - adi_hn07 2y ago
    Yes, both are correct spellings of the word.
cactusplant7374 2y ago
Just an FYI, your site is blocked by Sophos Web Protection: > Your organization's policy prohibits access to websites categorized as Spam URLs. Return to the page you were previously viewing.
closedl00p 2y ago
Thanks for sharing! I found an amusing math bug in the basic calculator: 0 + 0.00000001 gives 1e-8 (I see you’re displaying in scientific notation, hmm— I wonder how you’re storing it internally…) Then multiplying that by 5 gives… -39. Somehow 1e-8 * 5 is being parsed as 1 + (-8 * 5)?
thrance 2y ago
I tried 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 * 2 and it gave me 0. Precision on a calculator is very important, such operations should be exact. Please refrain from using floating point operations.
- jpc0 2y ago
  It may be pedantic from me but what are you calculating that needs that level of precision? Or more specifically, why not just use a different unit base, fixed point arithmetic doesn't come for free.
chriscjcj 2y ago
Very nicely done. If I were to tweak something.... Some have different names once you click on them. - "Speed" is "Speed and Pace." - "Data Size" is "Data Storage" - "Fuel Economy" is "Fuel Consumption" On the Data Size / Data Storage calculator, I would add kilobits, megabits, gigabits, and terabits. In addition to data storage, that might make it useful as a bandwidth calculator as well.
willwade 2y ago
Ok. I need a fully accessible sci calculator that is keyboard accessible for all functions. Check out desmos site. Their calc isn’t bad but clear button isn’t keyboard accessible.
nalinidash 2y ago
Looks like the website has been tagged as phishing site by opendns. When I open the website, it redirects to https://phish.opendns.com/null https://phish.opendns.com/null?... link
ndr42 2y ago
Looks nice. Feedback: I was trying to enter "1000$" and "12%" (in the loan calculator) and it rejected my inputs ("Loan amount must be a positive number" and "Interest rate must be between 0 and 100") - could you just make it a bit more forgiving, if the units $ or % are included in the user input?
kjhughes 2y ago
Suggestions: - Fix your certs to not lose traffic when Chrome (at least at the default security level) puts up a scary "Your connection is not private" warning for net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID and requires an override to proceed to your site. - Fix whatever reputation damage has caused you to be classified as a phishing site: https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=www.calcverse.live https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=www.calcverse.live
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  This is really strange, what can I do to resolve this? My SSL cert is valid. My site doesn't collect or store any sensitive information at all.
  - RandomDistort 2y ago
    I doubt the cert issue is on your end, it appears whenever OpenDNS (Cisco Umbrella) tries to intercept any site when it blocks it.
    - adi_hn07 2y ago
      Thanks for your reply. Will try to contact OpenDNS.
pkdpic 2y ago
Just a side question but "while the rest of the world builds ai systems" makes me curious about what rough percentage of software engineers out there are working directly on building AI systems, even just on a front end level. Assuming there's not an easily access exact percentage, just curious what people's perceptions are.
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Yup, I'm curious about this as well, although on social media it seems as if everyone is working on AI Agents or I'm in an AI bubble.
- amonith 2y ago
  Probably less than a year before although be aware that "ai systems" in this context most likely also means so called "gpt wrappers" (RAG systems, integrations etc.). Small data point: the software house I work for created a lot of those in 2024 because a lot of clients asked for it. However, clients quickly realized that it is not as quick and cheap as promised by AI companies and it requires a lot of work on their side to clean their data.
cbeach 2y ago
When it comes to tabulating currency amounts, it makes sense to right-align the numbers. That way, their magnitudes align. Maybe a monospace font for those numbers too.
avipars 2y ago
I also built a unit converter (for android - https://unitmeasure.xyz https://unitmeasure.xyz). Best of luck, and even though LLMs are widely available, good tools still come in handy!
sjakati98 2y ago
Sick work! I built this small calculator I was using to estimate Redis usage when I'm working on some projects: https://redisestimator.fly.dev https://redisestimator.fly.dev
jgorn 2y ago
I have a question about calculator building, if anyone has a suggestion. My industry revolves around quite complicated calculators, with anywhere from 10 to 50 data inputs - and the result are large projection tables and charts. These still live in excel, but I would love to move then into a web app. Is there a best practice way to go about this? I've tried basic html forms that pass to python for the number crunching (there are optimisations and Monte Carlos). But it gets so messy as the number of input fields increase. Does a tool exist to simplify this process?
- robertclaus 2y ago
  Something like Dash or Streamlit might be useful to manage an App like this.
- fragmede 2y ago
  unless you want to dumb down the interface so it's more like a wizard, the best you can do is make a framework so the complexity is separate. ie, the business logic is separate from the application logic. without more details it's impossible to say how I'd simplify it but there's gonna be a lot of having to learn your specific use case before suggesting how to simplify it. unfortunately the complexity has to live somewhere, the only question is how best to manage it.
fithisux 2y ago
While the world does AI I learn assembly
- noduerme 2y ago
  I really feel this, and I wonder whether it's us humans trying to reaffirm our higher reasoning, or whether it's a regression to trying to recapture a simpler age.
  - amelius 2y ago
    Both, probably.
  - lagrange77 2y ago
    For me it's also the joy of working with a deterministic system.
  - ReinoudL 2y ago
    Hi noduerme, I'm the guy who wrote the original 'Kaos'. I stumbled upon the discussion about it, and have no idea how to contact you besides commenting here. BTW assembly rocks :-).
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Really! Is it part of your profession or study?
  - fithisux 2y ago
    Hobby, I am a data engineer and definitely I will need to encounter AI. But assembly gives a different perspective of machines, make my brain hard-working and in case of societal collapse you need an assembler. We need more assemblers more cross-platform frameworks (collections of macros) and more emphasis on the way things work, like guides, articles. Not less.
    - dijksterhuis 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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eephd 2y ago
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191 points by adi_hn07 2y ago

myles-hn 2y ago

Same. But mine was an android app. github.com/crouther

tonetheman 2y ago

[dead]

kstrauser 2y ago

Where’s the math actually done, on device or on your server? Feedback: the compound interest calculator doesn’t support continual compounding? That’s surprising, and also the easiest to compute.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I must admit I still don't understand continual compounding
- Xelynega 2y ago
  Explained in a terrible way, it's integrals for interest if "compound daily/monthly/yearly" was an estimation using discrete intervals
  - skeeter2020 2y ago
    you didn't really improve by hiding behind "integrals"; this is why so many kids are afraid of calculus.
    - triyambakam 2y ago
      The explanation worked for me. I learned basic calculus but didn't know about continual compounding interest.
    - inopinatus 2y ago
      this isn’t kindergarten. if something is described concisely by analysis then that’s how I want it explained to me too.
    - Xelynega 2y ago
      There's a reason I prefaced it with "explained in a terrible way". It clicks that way in my head, might for others
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Imagine that instead of compounding the interest every day, you wanted to calculate it every nanosecond. And then, every billionth of a nanosecond. If you keep dividing that until it’s an infinite number of infinitely small compounding, you get a super simple equation: interest = e^(years*rate) 10% interest for 5 years? e^(5*.1) = 1.649 3% for 8 years? e^(8*.03) = 1.271 You can plug any numbers into that and get the end result in 1 step.
- afthonos 2y ago
  Sibling’s explanation is a great starting point! If you understand annual, weekly, and daily compounding, continuous compounding is the limit of what happens when the time you compound over becomes ever shorter. It’s not obvious without calculus, but it’s a well-defined function.

ysofunny 2y ago

https://planetcalc.com/ https://planetcalc.com/

lm28469 2y ago
and https://www.omnicalculator.com https://www.omnicalculator.com

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

4887d30omd8 2y ago

You're not the only one. I recently took up running and didn't particularly like any of the existing running pace calculators, so I made my own: https://calcubest.com/health/runningpace https://calcubest.com/health/runningpace And then kinda realized that there were others I wanted to have, and a few I thought others might want, so I added more. A calculator is simple enough that it's fun to work on one when I need a break from something more complex but want to be able to do something other than doom scrolling. So now every couple of weeks I add another one.

megadata 2y ago
To anyone thinking of starting running but either doesn't know where to start or thinks he can't do it, look up "couch to 5k". It's a free NHS audio program that guides your phase so that in 9 weeks you can do a 5k run.
- 4887d30omd8 2y ago
  I can second this. That's the program I started with. I'm now training for a half marathon using https://www.baa.org/races/baa-half-marathon/train/leveltwo https://www.baa.org/races/baa-half-marathon/train/leveltwo and I've shaved like a minute off my mile pace while increasing my milage from 6 mile runs to 12 mile runs. There's lots of programs for running and most of them seem good for improving performance.
  - anshumankmr 2y ago
    No strength training in this?? I have been training legs for years along with runs (treadmill runs/uphill runs etc)... only problem my timing for the half marathon has gone down from 2h35 to 2h38 and then I had an accident last year which made me unable to run most of the second half of last year which has made things a lot tougher for me to train :(

jrockway 2y ago

I like `units` for unit conversion. It's in the default install of MacOS, so readily accessible for most people.

redbell 2y ago

Somehow related: “A calculator app? Anyone could make that”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953

stanleykm 2y ago

One calculator I’ve come to love over the years is Numi. I keep it open all day every day and it does a pretty good job of bridging the gap between the typical skewmorphic calculator app and scilab or python. It’s a text based calculator that allows you to declare variables and do unit and base conversions and save and load your work. No graphing though unfortunately and i dont think it really has much in the way of plugin support. Anyway not to say your calculators arent useful op, i just think that something that can be open on the desktop is more useful than something that is hidden in a chrome browser tab.

lubujackson 2y ago
Haven't tried Numi, but I made a calculator with variables as a side project on a whim: https://calc.li/ https://calc.li/ - it is online, but there is no backend and you can save the whole page as an offline file if you want, using localStorage for state.
- ay 2y ago
  Typing “2”, “+”, “3” on an iPhone in Safari gets it to display “23+”, which doesn’t appear correct to me ? Looks cute otherwise.
saransh29 2y ago
I also love numi on my mac! a similar online alternative is https://numbr.dev/ https://numbr.dev/

bityard 2y ago

If you're taking suggestions, I have a frequent need to do basic arithmetic on fractions and not many "app" calculators do that well or at all.

akkartik 2y ago
This is very different, but check out my https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/notebook.love https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/notebook.love
- bityard 2y ago
  I don't have an immediate use for it, but I quite like it!
  - akkartik 2y ago
    Me neither and me too! Thanks :)
neilv 2y ago
On the desktop, if you keep a Scheme interpreter installed, you can use it as a quick arbitrary-precision calculator, including support for fractions. Guile is the most easily available one on a Linux system, though some others will give better REPL out of the box. $ guile GNU Guile 3.0.8 Copyright (C) 1995-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Guile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `,show w'. This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `,show c' for details. Enter `,help' for help. scheme@(guile-user)> (+ 1/2 1/8 1/8) $1 = 3/4 scheme@(guile-user)> (* $1 1/2) $2 = 3/8 scheme@(guile-user)> (define rate 42) scheme@(guile-user)> (* rate $2) $3 = 63/4 scheme@(guile-user)> (define (foo x) (- x 1/32)) scheme@(guile-user)> (foo $3) $4 = 503/32 scheme@(guile-user)> (exact->inexact $4) $5 = 15.71875 scheme@(guile-user)> You can also run a Scheme REPL within Emacs, with `M-x run-scheme RET`. Optionally with Quack. https://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/
- deleted 2y ago

ikhare 2y ago

On the topic of calculators. I discovered Figr[1] on HN a while ago, and it really helps when doing one off multi variable thing, like helping a customer estimate their bill etc. Kudos on building this. I occasionally search for these on Google and am always disappointed by the mess. Bookmarked. [1] https://www.figr.app/ https://www.figr.app/

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thank you so much for the bookmark! Means a lot. Figr looks great, will take inspiration and guidance from it. Thanks for the suggestion.

bvanderveen 2y ago

A random dimensional analysis that I find amusing about fuel consumption units: liters / 100 km => m^3 / m => m^2 (volume) / (distance) => (area) This can be interpreted as the cross-sectional area of a hypothetical trough of fuel running alongside the road, whose contents you slurp up and consume in your engine as you pass (in lieu of using fuel stored in an onboard reservoir).

chrismorgan 2y ago
Another really fun one, though slightly less literal than L/100km, is charging rates in electric vehicles, which often present charge state as range (km), rather than energy stored (kWh); and so if it takes you one hour to gain 300km of range, well… you were charging at a rate of 300km/h. (With in-flight refueling, you could potentially refuel an aeroplane at 300km/h at 300km/h…) Related: Uncanceled Units <https://xkcd.com/3038/ https://xkcd.com/3038/>. (“50 gallons per square foot” especially is similar to your L/100km: volume ÷ area = length.)

noduerme 2y ago

This is great. I really think that having a theme to iterate on is the best way of revisiting coding/math skills and learning new ones. And building things from scratch is so much more rewarding than snapping parts together. My free time right now is trying to rewrite 90s screensavers down to the rasterizer level, without consulting anything for how to do stuff like antialiasing. One little note, just checking out your loan calculator: On my phone, the total interest div is cut off at the decimal point, and the total payment overflows the nice round rect holder. You could dial in the font size scaling with a bit of custom Javascript there. They stand out, too, because they're bottom line figures.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thanks a lot for the feedback! I have fixed the issue, please let me know if you want any further changes.

BigParm 2y ago

This is dope

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thanks :)

wendyshu 2y ago

Can't Wolfram Alpha do this?

rishikeshs 2y ago

I started something similar recently: https://calcbun.com https://calcbun.com They key is finding unique calculators.

lelandfe 2y ago

If I calculate something, hit back in my history, and then return, what I had entered is wiped out. If I enter text into this HN comment box, hit back in my history, and then return, what I've typed is maintained.

karparov 2y ago

A suggestion for your speed converter: different sports use different units which your converter could support as well. A few examples: Running usually measures pace in minutes per kilometer or mile. That will be extra fun for you since it wouldn't be 4.33333 min/km but would be written as sth like 4:20 min/km. Swimming uses min/100m or sec/100m. Rowing uses min/500m. If you add these then I'd be using this a lot!

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thanks for the great feedback! I've added pace units to the speed convertor, do check it out and let me know if you need any changes. You can send all requests at the contact form on the site too: https://www.calcverse.live/contact https://www.calcverse.live/contact Will aim to implement it within 24 hrs. Thanks again!

aredox 2y ago

AI can't calculate anyway, so, you're doing good.

gjs278 2y ago
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adi_hn07 2y ago
Good to hear that :)

opem 2y ago

Loved the title! XD

adi_hn07 2y ago
Its good to hear that :)

4ndrewl 2y ago

Loser. I bet you missed out on the metaverse. And blockchain. Seriously, this is great - solving problems for users seems to be hugely underrated here.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Good thing I missed out on metaverse and blockchain, or I'd be in debt. Seriously, I have optimism about them too, just not jumping on that train yet. Thanks for the feedback :)

Uptrenda 2y ago

inspiring in a weird way. maybe there is hope for engineering afterall.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Happy to fight for engineering, any day :)

chrismorgan 2y ago

Some comments, based purely on https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/bmi https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/bmi. • Keyboard accessibility is suffering, because the buttons aren’t associated with a form. Most notably, pressing Enter when one of the text boxes is selected doesn’t do anything. You should put everything inside a <form> element, and then if you’re using <button>, decide whether it’s type=button or type=submit. • A tad more subjective, but actual radio buttons are better than the buttons you’ve used for Metric/Imperial. • As it stands, they lack a keyboard focus indication. (And the submit button has poor focus indication.) • People don’t talk about heights in inches. They talk about them in feet and inches. You want to be able to accept feet and inches as two separate inputs. Not everyone who knows that their height is X′Y″ knows that means 12X+Y inches, and even more will make a mistake in calculating that, or just give up. • If you switch between metric and imperial, and there’s a number in height or weight, it should probably convert the number to the chosen scale. • If you just recalculated on input rather than on submit click, the experience would probably be smoother. • Colour contrast on “Category: Overweight” is definitely too low. “Category: Normal weight” is also a little too low; underweight and obese are fine. • Consider sometimes what related information might be useful. Every BMI calculator lists the categories, but something I somehow haven’t ever seen and yet which would be very useful for giving someone something to aim for is a mapping: for a given height, what weights do the categories correspond to? e.g. for 200cm, underweight = 0–74kg, normal weight = 74–100kg, overweight = 100–120kg, obese = 120–∞kg. Consider visualisations too. And mentioning what the calculation actually is that is being performed. Calculations are simple. Presenting them well is the harder bit.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'll take some time to go through these points and fix the issues, and will revert back here asap.
adi_hn07 2y ago
I have implemented most points, except the 2nd and last ones. I felt its better to have buttons as they are easier to click. I'm figuring out how to implement the last point.

newbie578 2y ago

On wide screens the app is not centered, add some margin auto.

hkt 2y ago

Bless you. Keep fighting the good fight.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Will keep fighting.

ninalanyon 2y ago

BMI calculators are dangerous tools in uncritical hands. Here is a link to the UK NHS page that provides such a calculator but only after it has described some of the limitations: https://www.nhs.uk/health-assessment-tools/calculate-your-body-mass-index/ https://www.nhs.uk/health-assessment-tools/calculate-your-bo...

megadata 2y ago
Yep, according to BMI, Schwarzenegger has always been obese af.

fragmede 2y ago

A tiny bit of feedback, for you about unit conversion. I don't want to convert 47383974 seconds to hours, I want to know that it's 1 year, 6 months, 0 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes, and 18 seconds. I don't want to know that 7492837 inches. that's 624,403.0833 feet, but what I really want is for it to say 118 miles, 454 yards, 1 foot, and 1 inch!

deleted 2y ago
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imcritic 2y ago

I tried your interest calculator and it fails. Maybe because it accepts duration in years and I've specified 0.5 (with quarterly payouts). I didn't get any errors, just the wrong result (0). I think the main problem is the poor choice of units: user should be able to select even days as units, not just months/quarters.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thanks a lot for reporting this! I have fixed the issue, and improved the ui of the result given by the calculator. Do let me know if there are any more changes you would like to see.
- imcritic 2y ago
  I don't see the issue being fixed: try to calculate investment of $1M with 20% annual interest for a loan with 0.5y duration. The calc says the income would be 0.

markus_zhang 2y ago

Good work. I for a second thought they are physical ones.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Thanks! Yup, its natural to think of that at first, that would be even more fun :)
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  BTW I have always been thinking about making some native apps in the spirit of Borland Sidekick -- a lot of small, native apps that a programmer can use, or a business man can use.

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Jeremy1026 2y ago

All of these calculators, and not one basic math calculator.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
We have slide rules for that.
adi_hn07 2y ago
There is a basic math calculator: https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/basic https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/basic Do let me know if you want to see any changes in it.
- Jeremy1026 2y ago
  Ah! Sure is. I missed the sidebar when I looked through. Overall this is very nice. I typically use omnicalculator, this is a nice fresh look compared to that tool.
  - adi_hn07 2y ago
    Thanks! If you need a new calculator, need to report a bug or any improvements I can make, you can reach out on the contact form on the site too: https://www.calcverse.live/contact https://www.calcverse.live/contact I aim to fulfil requests within 24 hrs on an average.

airstrike 2y ago

You could ride the AI hype by turning these calculators into something LLMs can represent, then having them build them declaratively, then have another model test and rate the calculators repeatedly providing feedback... and 6 months later have the best calculator ever: the HP-12c

simplecto 2y ago

Hahaha. There is something in the aether today. I just posted here about my own similar tool, but doing it with REST apis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173022

nicbou 2y ago

That's a nice, clean website. Well done! I create calculators in support of the guides I write for immigrants.[0] They are a great way to turn 10 pages of text into a simple form with a clear output. I'm a big fan of them, especially when you add advice to the output. A bit of advice + opinions: - The fields look grayed out and disabled. Using a traditional white background would make more sense. - You should explain what the calculator does, why it matters, and how to interpret the output. This confers some SEO benefits, too. - The age calculator would be easier to find as a difference-between-two-dates calculators. It would be cool to have a reverse "X days ago" calculator. I use both often, and most of the top options suck. - Set some maximum line widths. It helps readability. [0]: https://allaboutberlin.com/tools https://allaboutberlin.com/tools

anentropic 2y ago

FYI the word is "converter" not "convertor" https://www.dictionary.com/browse/converter https://www.dictionary.com/browse/converter

rossdavidh 2y ago
Looks like both spellings are used: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/converter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/converter
- adi_hn07 2y ago
  Yes, both are correct spellings of the word.

cactusplant7374 2y ago

Just an FYI, your site is blocked by Sophos Web Protection: > Your organization's policy prohibits access to websites categorized as Spam URLs. Return to the page you were previously viewing.

closedl00p 2y ago

Thanks for sharing! I found an amusing math bug in the basic calculator: 0 + 0.00000001 gives 1e-8 (I see you’re displaying in scientific notation, hmm— I wonder how you’re storing it internally…) Then multiplying that by 5 gives… -39. Somehow 1e-8 * 5 is being parsed as 1 + (-8 * 5)?

thrance 2y ago

I tried 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 * 2 and it gave me 0. Precision on a calculator is very important, such operations should be exact. Please refrain from using floating point operations.

jpc0 2y ago
It may be pedantic from me but what are you calculating that needs that level of precision? Or more specifically, why not just use a different unit base, fixed point arithmetic doesn't come for free.

chriscjcj 2y ago

Very nicely done. If I were to tweak something.... Some have different names once you click on them. - "Speed" is "Speed and Pace." - "Data Size" is "Data Storage" - "Fuel Economy" is "Fuel Consumption" On the Data Size / Data Storage calculator, I would add kilobits, megabits, gigabits, and terabits. In addition to data storage, that might make it useful as a bandwidth calculator as well.

willwade 2y ago

Ok. I need a fully accessible sci calculator that is keyboard accessible for all functions. Check out desmos site. Their calc isn’t bad but clear button isn’t keyboard accessible.

nalinidash 2y ago

Looks like the website has been tagged as phishing site by opendns. When I open the website, it redirects to https://phish.opendns.com/null https://phish.opendns.com/null?... link

ndr42 2y ago

Looks nice. Feedback: I was trying to enter "1000$" and "12%" (in the loan calculator) and it rejected my inputs ("Loan amount must be a positive number" and "Interest rate must be between 0 and 100") - could you just make it a bit more forgiving, if the units $ or % are included in the user input?

kjhughes 2y ago

Suggestions: - Fix your certs to not lose traffic when Chrome (at least at the default security level) puts up a scary "Your connection is not private" warning for net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID and requires an override to proceed to your site. - Fix whatever reputation damage has caused you to be classified as a phishing site: https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=www.calcverse.live https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=www.calcverse.live

adi_hn07 2y ago
This is really strange, what can I do to resolve this? My SSL cert is valid. My site doesn't collect or store any sensitive information at all.
- RandomDistort 2y ago
  I doubt the cert issue is on your end, it appears whenever OpenDNS (Cisco Umbrella) tries to intercept any site when it blocks it.
  - adi_hn07 2y ago
    Thanks for your reply. Will try to contact OpenDNS.

pkdpic 2y ago

Just a side question but "while the rest of the world builds ai systems" makes me curious about what rough percentage of software engineers out there are working directly on building AI systems, even just on a front end level. Assuming there's not an easily access exact percentage, just curious what people's perceptions are.

adi_hn07 2y ago
Yup, I'm curious about this as well, although on social media it seems as if everyone is working on AI Agents or I'm in an AI bubble.
amonith 2y ago
Probably less than a year before although be aware that "ai systems" in this context most likely also means so called "gpt wrappers" (RAG systems, integrations etc.). Small data point: the software house I work for created a lot of those in 2024 because a lot of clients asked for it. However, clients quickly realized that it is not as quick and cheap as promised by AI companies and it requires a lot of work on their side to clean their data.

cbeach 2y ago

When it comes to tabulating currency amounts, it makes sense to right-align the numbers. That way, their magnitudes align. Maybe a monospace font for those numbers too.

avipars 2y ago

I also built a unit converter (for android - https://unitmeasure.xyz https://unitmeasure.xyz). Best of luck, and even though LLMs are widely available, good tools still come in handy!

sjakati98 2y ago

Sick work! I built this small calculator I was using to estimate Redis usage when I'm working on some projects: https://redisestimator.fly.dev https://redisestimator.fly.dev

jgorn 2y ago

I have a question about calculator building, if anyone has a suggestion. My industry revolves around quite complicated calculators, with anywhere from 10 to 50 data inputs - and the result are large projection tables and charts. These still live in excel, but I would love to move then into a web app. Is there a best practice way to go about this? I've tried basic html forms that pass to python for the number crunching (there are optimisations and Monte Carlos). But it gets so messy as the number of input fields increase. Does a tool exist to simplify this process?

robertclaus 2y ago
Something like Dash or Streamlit might be useful to manage an App like this.
fragmede 2y ago
unless you want to dumb down the interface so it's more like a wizard, the best you can do is make a framework so the complexity is separate. ie, the business logic is separate from the application logic. without more details it's impossible to say how I'd simplify it but there's gonna be a lot of having to learn your specific use case before suggesting how to simplify it. unfortunately the complexity has to live somewhere, the only question is how best to manage it.

fithisux 2y ago

While the world does AI I learn assembly

noduerme 2y ago
I really feel this, and I wonder whether it's us humans trying to reaffirm our higher reasoning, or whether it's a regression to trying to recapture a simpler age.
- amelius 2y ago
  Both, probably.
- lagrange77 2y ago
  For me it's also the joy of working with a deterministic system.
- ReinoudL 2y ago
  Hi noduerme, I'm the guy who wrote the original 'Kaos'. I stumbled upon the discussion about it, and have no idea how to contact you besides commenting here. BTW assembly rocks :-).
adi_hn07 2y ago
Really! Is it part of your profession or study?
- fithisux 2y ago
  Hobby, I am a data engineer and definitely I will need to encounter AI. But assembly gives a different perspective of machines, make my brain hard-working and in case of societal collapse you need an assembler. We need more assemblers more cross-platform frameworks (collections of macros) and more emphasis on the way things work, like guides, articles. Not less.
  - dijksterhuis 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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eephd 2y ago

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