Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

soulver.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 186 posts

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#51

Post by eswat »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #48
kennethfriedman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And another FYI: Soulver 2 is still available on the Mac App Store for $9. Whereas Soulver 3 is on their website for $30.

I'm pretty sure that's a price reduction. I think Soulver used to be either $19.99 or $24.99; Soulver 3 is a price increase (although not unreasonable). However, it doesn't sync with Soulver for iOS yet. I suspect Soulver 3 will probably come to the Mac App Store once the iOS app is updated to use the new file format.

Are you sure? Looking at my Soulver macOS receipt I did purchase it for $10 in 2012. I can't tell if it was a sale price but would be coincidental to have the same price cut 7-years apart.

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#52

Post by jonstaab »

zwily wrote: post #35
jonstaab wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded (though I'm tentatively switching to dc[0], reverse polish notation ftw), can anyone who has used both Numi and Soulver point out the differences between the two? They look super similar to me. [0] https://www.computerhope.com/unix/udc.htm

Soulver has iOS apps too.

Sadly, I am Android-only. Is there any difference in functionality, or it a pure clone (edit: or, is Numi the clone? Sound like Soulver has been around a while)?

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#53

Post by frereubu »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #45

I’ve been using Soulver for like 12 years and it’s one of my favorite and most-used apps. There was a huge amount of time between Soulver 2 and 3 so I gladly paid for version 3 (even though it doesn’t sync with iOS which isn’t a big deal, and some features haven’t made their way over so I still keep 2 installed). There might be decent alternatives but at this point, I’m so used to Soulver I don’t want anything else.…

Me too, but don't you find the way Soulver 3 manages documents a bit weird? I much preferred the old way where you could save document wherever you wanted, whereas version 3 seems to want to control all of that for you. Unlike the previous version I couldn't wrap my head around how it was supposed to work quickly, and went back to version 2. I was happy to pay for a new version just to make sure Soulver isn't abandoned because my working life would be noticeably more difficult without it.

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#54

Post by pfranz »

jwr wrote: post #49

The problem I have with this type of app is that I am never sure what will work and what will not. It's "natural language" only after you learn which subset of language the app actually understands. I still can't find anything that beats my HP 50g (either physical or running in one of the emulators) for just about any kind of computation involving several pieces of data. For more data, a spreadsheet is really hard to…

I have similar concerns as you, but my current approach of copy/pasting from notepad (so I can label things) to a calculator is very prone to error or being outdated. I think the tight feedback loop in an app like this makes things discoverable and builds confidence in the output.

edit: when I'm "deep in it" this is similar to what I use Excel/GDocs for, but they're heavier than I'd like for more casual use. I spend half the time I'm using a spreadsheet in Google looking at documentation for Excel functions.

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#55

Post by eswat »

I don’t use Soulver that much anymore other than while travelling, but it’s great for tracking my travel budget on my phone: able to clearly list what I’ve bought, for how much, what the grand total is in my home currency and leave comments on things.

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#56

Post by filmgirlcw »

jwr wrote: post #49

The problem I have with this type of app is that I am never sure what will work and what will not. It's "natural language" only after you learn which subset of language the app actually understands. I still can't find anything that beats my HP 50g (either physical or running in one of the emulators) for just about any kind of computation involving several pieces of data. For more data, a spreadsheet is really hard to…

I mean, I use PCalc[1] all the time too, but I love Soulver b/c unlike Excel —- which is great but can be a lot —- it’s super easy to just jot stuff down and have it calculated, just like a spreadsheet.

You’re not wrong on the syntax stuff, but as long as the math operations are there, it’ll do what you want. The special stuff for currency or other conversions isn’t very hard to get the hang of once you start using an app.

Really, the frustrating thing is when I’m on a machine that’s not mine and I hit my Soulver system-wide shortcut and can’t open up my scratchpad. But that’s my problem.

[1]: https://www.pcalc.com/

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#57

Post by vanderZwan »

gabipurcaru wrote: post #31

I wrote https://dedo.io/ as a web version of this, since there's no good equivalent for linux

Nice! Is it open-source?

This is the kind of web-app that has a legitimate use for off-line first service workers and localStorage to save the previous session

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#58

Post by chipotle_coyote »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #13
indentit wrote: post #4

A paid, Mac only app which could fairly easily be implemented as a plugin to any popular text editor... I'm not sure I understand the appeal - what am I missing here, please? :)

I think you're missing the gap between "could fairly easily be" and "has been". As a programmer, the REPL and/or notebook interfaces for my favorite languages provide what Soulver offers already, so it isn't as valuable to me. To a non-programmer, Soulver seems like a very pleasant, user-friendly tool.

I'm a programmer, at least occasionally, and Soulver is a pleasant, user-friendly tool to me. When I open Soulver, it's because I want to do some unstructured multistep math work and it's faster and easier to do it in Soulver than a spreadsheet program. Jupyter Notebook could undoubtedly do similar work, but it doesn't read to me like it would be the best tool for the job.

Re: Soulver – Notepad, meet calculator

#60

Post by undecisive »

gabipurcaru wrote: post #31

I wrote https://dedo.io/ as a web version of this, since there's no good equivalent for linux

That's pretty impressive. Is it open source? I'd love to see something like this as a plugin for something like https://turtlapp.com/

(edit: and apparently I'm not the only person with this thought! Good work :D)

Post reply on HN