3 ms·
As a teen in the late 80's I had an HP calculator that I programmed to compute molecular weights given an input string like "H2SO4". It felt like having a secr
by grimnebulin 1y ago
As a teen in the late 80's I had an HP calculator that I programmed to compute molecular weights given an input string like "H2SO4". It felt like having a secret superpower, especially when I participated in competitive exams. I was a very straightlaced kid and would not have used the program if it such things were explicitly forbidden, but as far as I could tell, they never were.
- viraptor 1y agoReminds me of when I write a j2me app for matrix diagonalization because we could use the old feature phones as calculators. Nobody thought we'd be mad enough to use those to cheat...
- QuantumNomad_ 1y agoDo you still have the source code for the j2me app? I hadn’t yet learned to program back when I was still using a feature phone, but I have a lot of fond memories of J2ME applications that I installed on my phones. Mostly games, of course. I encourage anyone that wrote J2ME games and utilities, no matter how small or big, to upload the source to GitHub :)
- viraptor 1y agoThat one would be definitely lost to time...
- QuantumNomad_ 1y agoYeah makes sense. I have very little left of my early stuff too, heh
- nicman23 1y agowell a lot of bio info stuff are still using java.
- QuantumNomad_ 1y agoBut surely not so much J2ME for feature phones stuff right? Those bio info stuff are probably rather desktop applications.
- nicman23 1y agothey are mostly terminal with some gui optinally
- mrbungie 1y agoDid you tell your teachers about your superpower? But normally it depends on the subject and if the automation/machine solves the primary skill being teached or if its just a "secondary/tertiary" skill. Are you in a Calculus 101 class? Calculators like TI-89 are likely to be prohibited when examining for deriving analytical solutions for derivatives and integrals. Statistics, Physics or any other subjects that needs applied maths? Such a calculator is probably a minimum requirement to take the course.
- grimnebulin 1y agoI was on pretty good terms with my chemistry teacher, so...maybe? It's been a while, but I don't remember either showing it off or taking pains to keep it secret. To adults, that is; my nerdy friends and I delighted in showing off the cool stuff we did with our calculators. I vaguely remember thinking that one likely reason shortcuts like mine were not prohibited was because no one in charge suspected that such things were even possible with current technology, or if they were, that a child would be able to exploit it. But as long as I kept to the letter of the rules, I considered myself ethically in the clear.
- mrbungie 1y ago> But as long as I kept to the letter of the rules, I considered myself ethically in the clear. Yeah, totally, just to be clear I'm not judging. In fact, if you programmed it to handle those operations, one could argue you had already learned a big chunk of what was going to be measured in the exams. Kind of similar to the paradox of creating and using cheat sheets, is highly likely you're accidentally learning about the subject matter in the process of writing the sheet, sometimes up to a point where the cheat sheet is not necessary anymore.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> Kind of similar to the paradox of creating and using cheat sheets, is highly likely you're accidentally learning about the subject matter in the process of writing the sheet, sometimes up to a point where the cheat sheet is not necessary anymore. The problem is (example from mathematics): even if you are capable of deriving some formula (you thus understood the topic well), it takes a lot of time in the exam. Looking at the cheat sheet is much faster - in particular when the time is somewhat precious in the exam.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoStuff like that seems harder to do than learning the damn thing correctly
- Spivak 1y agoThe calculator tricked them into studying. Same trick as the "one note card, front back" but in this case accidental.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoI you like Chemistry, then yes. If you like programming but dislike chemistry, then no.
- taneq 1y agoI always felt (and my maths teachers agreed) that if I understood something sufficiently to automate it, I’d proved my point and didn’t need to do the rest of the exercises. Edit: Automate in the sense of coding it myself, not in the sense of downloading some software.
- grimnebulin 1y agoI could do it correctly from the get-go. The program just saved me from drudgery many times over. Probably enough times to recoup my time investment to create the program, but in any case I enjoyed coding for its own sake.