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I basically stopped using "calculators" when Soulver and more recently Calca came out. Much easier to use and a lot more flexible. That said the graphing in th

by zarify 13y ago

I basically stopped using "calculators" when Soulver and more recently Calca came out. Much easier to use and a lot more flexible. That said the graphing in this looks quite nice.

Lazare 13y ago
Wow, Calca is amazing. Thanks for the tip. :)
- peterhajas 13y ago
  Calca is such a great calculator. I've encountered some issues where it refuses to recompute (systems of equations confuse it when you keep redefining variables), but I suppose that's not what it's for. I love being able to define real functions in it. The documentation is also all composed in Calca, which is helpful.
  - ketralnis 13y ago
    I've seen it be really awkward with whitespace, usually when I think it's not recalculating it's because of a stray or missing space somewhere that's keeping it from seeing that something is an equation (it tries to auto detect between equations and markdown). The common case for me is that I keep a very short-term personal ledger in it, just the stuff that hasn't hit the bank account yet, like this: chequing = (1,000 # current balance - 2 # coffee - 15 # groceries + 2 # Joe paid me back ) => 985 But messing up the spacing in any way, for instance like this: chequing = (1,000 # current balance - 2 # coffee - 15 # groceries + 20 # Joe paid me back ) => 985 (note one fewer space before the closing paren) and now no changes to the values inside the parens take effect on the total after the => (which for non-Calca-using spectators should always auto-update based on changes). I copy-pasted this out of Calca just now and you can see the the total is incorrect. Sometimes this messes up the syntax highlighting so that it's obvious, but usually it doesn't, and I'm left wondering why it's not updating.
ketralnis 13y ago
Calca is amazingly good for its simplicity. It's replaced my use of Excel for the cases that Excel was overkill. Well worth the $5

by zarify 13y ago

I basically stopped using "calculators" when Soulver and more recently Calca came out. Much easier to use and a lot more flexible. That said the graphing in this looks quite nice.

Lazare 13y ago

Wow, Calca is amazing. Thanks for the tip. :)

peterhajas 13y ago
Calca is such a great calculator. I've encountered some issues where it refuses to recompute (systems of equations confuse it when you keep redefining variables), but I suppose that's not what it's for. I love being able to define real functions in it. The documentation is also all composed in Calca, which is helpful.
- ketralnis 13y ago
  I've seen it be really awkward with whitespace, usually when I think it's not recalculating it's because of a stray or missing space somewhere that's keeping it from seeing that something is an equation (it tries to auto detect between equations and markdown). The common case for me is that I keep a very short-term personal ledger in it, just the stuff that hasn't hit the bank account yet, like this: chequing = (1,000 # current balance - 2 # coffee - 15 # groceries + 2 # Joe paid me back ) => 985 But messing up the spacing in any way, for instance like this: chequing = (1,000 # current balance - 2 # coffee - 15 # groceries + 20 # Joe paid me back ) => 985 (note one fewer space before the closing paren) and now no changes to the values inside the parens take effect on the total after the => (which for non-Calca-using spectators should always auto-update based on changes). I copy-pasted this out of Calca just now and you can see the the total is incorrect. Sometimes this messes up the syntax highlighting so that it's obvious, but usually it doesn't, and I'm left wondering why it's not updating.

ketralnis 13y ago

Calca is amazingly good for its simplicity. It's replaced my use of Excel for the cases that Excel was overkill. Well worth the $5