Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#101

Post by commakozzi » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

readingnews wrote: post #2

I have an old HP 15C RPN scientific calculator. - I know where the buttons are without looking. - It has functions my Android calculator does not have (directly or that I know of). - It has a strange satisfying tactile feedback. - It never interrupts me. Ever. - It never distracts me. Ever. I reach for it frequently.

IMHO the HP 15C RPN is the best calculator ever made. I still have the original with the slip case and manual. However, more often these days i just use my phone's calculator without RPN (i don't need to do a lot of complicated math for mechanical engineering -- we use tables for most stuff). I reached a point/decision several years ago to protect my HP 15C for posterity.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#102

Post by mikewarot » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

I still have a cheap Casio I use from time to time. Using it to calculate logarithms using only multiplication to the 10th power and the occasional divide by 10 was a calming thing to do over lunch in the gear shop without Internet access.

Start with X. If 10 or more add 1 to the log10 for each decimal If smaller than 1, subtract 1 each time you multiply by 10.writw that down plus a decimal point

Now the fun part, the fraction of the logarithm

Hit multiply 9 times then equal, to get the 10th power on the Casio

Each time you divide by 10 to get it back into range between 1 and 10, add 1 to the fraction

Repeat until you've got enough digits

PS: it also works for binary or any other integer base.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#103

Post by jmclnx » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

I would, but one of the main keys stopped working. It is a very old solar scientific calculator and large for a calculator.

If I could open up the case without cracking it I would attempt a repair, but I know I would end up breaking it :(

Now, I mainly use bc(1).

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#104

Post by smithtech » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

I use TI-36x on my desk however recently I’ve been using Julia, Pluto and a combination of Handcalcs.jl and Unitful.jl for engineering calculation with a lot of success. Very ergonomic for that type of work.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#105

Post by david_wpg » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

I like a physical calculator if I'm doing my taxes, monthly budget, or if I'm doing a lot of calculations. If I'm quickly adding something up, I use Wolfram Alpha or my phone.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#106

Post by yial » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

I have an HP-12C I keep In my laptop bag, and I also have a construction calculator I use on occasion.

The most valuable is usually the printing calculator I use for totaling sums on occasion.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#107

Post by jllyhill » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

Haven't had a need for a hardware calculator since the first year in the university, even though I got to the PhD in physics. The calculations are either too hard to do by hand (at work) or too trivial and few to require anything more complex than a basic Android or Windows calculator.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#108

Post by tsm » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

I own a handful of TI calculators (TI-{80, 83, 83+, 86, 89T, NSpire CAS}, possibly a few others) but actually use a TI-89 Titanium emulator on my Android phone. I no longer do anything remotely interesting with it, but I prefer it to the stock calculator since I know how it does order of operations, it shows fractions, it's easy to get old return values, etc. Don't tell me if the stock calculator now does all that; the TI-89 ergonomics are burned into my brain. (I was in an advanced math class which got me using a TI-80 at the age of 9)

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#109

Post by ceving » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

No. Droid48 has replaced it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

#110

Post by aleph_minus_one » Tue, Feb 03, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

> I’ve noticed that most physical scientific and graphing calculators are easily outdone in terms of performance, capability and ease of use by the likes of Desmos and the default calculators on OS’es like the iOS, Android, and Windows.

This does not fit my experience. Physical calculators still excel with respect to handiness, and are in my experience typically more convenient to use than these bad default calculators.

The tool that rather made me mostly abandon physical calculators (except if one is forced to use one, like for some kinds of exams) is rather Wolfram Mathematica.

This program is so much more capable (a complete different league) than what every physical calculator that I am aware of has to offer that convenience and handiness of a physical calculator does not matter anymore for the comparison: Wolfram Mathematica is compared to a physical calculator like what a physical calculator is compared to doing all comparisons by hand.