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Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

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Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#31

Post by qz2 »

jack_pp wrote: post #27
qz2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your position is unrealistic for an education setting. You’re proposing working computers and smartphones for every desk and student. Computers and apps are not standardised at all. Disparity between them and compatibility issues are a massive contention when you have lots of people to educate. Not only that, even today here in the UK, not every student has a smartphone or a home computer so you’re instantly…

You are saying that there exists a segment of the college student population that will spend 100$ on a scientific calculator but does not own a smartphone?

Yes. Plenty. Also not many people pay $100. There’s a thriving second hand market for much less.

When the TI83 was the calculator I’d actually buy 100 or so for low price at start of summer (large surplus), spend two weeks clean and refurb and then sell them again for 3x the amount at the end (high demand)

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#32

Post by Ecco »

IndrekR wrote: post #12

I had NumWorks[1] calculator, which also has Python support. Based on STM32F4 series MCU. Had a decent battery life. Unfortunately it died some time ago, after a year of usage, and I have not been able to use it any more. Using quite common Sharp EL-W506XVL[2] on desk and HP-42S clone Free42[3] on the phone/PC nowadays. [1] https://www.numworks.com/ [2] http://www.sharp-calculators.com/en/category/6-educational-c...…

Hi! NumWorks founder here. First of all thanks for the mention. Also your calculator’s battery dying that early is not normal, I’m very sorry to hear that. We’re doing everything we can to preserve battery life (namely, low charge current, no over-charging, and very low discharge current), and our most pessimistic estimates give us at least 10 years of battery life. If you send us an email at contact@numworks.com I’m pretty sure you would qualify for a free replacement.

On a different note, and regarding the original link: we actually were the first to introduce Python on a graphing calculator in 2017. We opted for (and contributed to) MicroPython. Three years later, all of our competitors have copied us :-)

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#33

Post by Ecco »

rbanffy wrote: post #14
IndrekR wrote: post #12

I had NumWorks[1] calculator, which also has Python support. Based on STM32F4 series MCU. Had a decent battery life. Unfortunately it died some time ago, after a year of usage, and I have not been able to use it any more. Using quite common Sharp EL-W506XVL[2] on desk and HP-42S clone Free42[3] on the phone/PC nowadays. [1] https://www.numworks.com/ [2] http://www.sharp-calculators.com/en/category/6-educational-c...…

This NumWorks is a beautiful piece of hardware. I recently got myself an HP-35s and it's delightful to use a physical calculator after all these years of firing up Python on the shell.

Thanks!

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#34

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

papito wrote: post #26
MayeulC wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at least in France, those expensive graphing calculators are mandatory in high school and later if you choose to study sciences. Some of it is to avoid "cheating" (not using a computer during exams, a new "exam mode" was also recently mandated, with a flashing LED). But I am not sure why calculators are still that expensive today: https://xkcd.com/768/ That, while you can buy a linux-compatible processor for a…

We should just treat cheating as a skill, as those people will get ahead first anyway.

Until they can't cheat, then they can't do anything because they never learned how to do it. Bad idea.

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#35

Post by ntoll »

pansa2 wrote: post #29

> Please note that MicroPython is different from the Python that runs on a computer. I once considered embedding MicroPython into a (software) product myself, but was dissuaded by the number of people who didn’t like being limited to a subset of Python. Instead I used Lua, which is much less widely-known but is small enough to embed the whole language. It’s interesting that Casio made the opposite decision. There’s d…

The "bits that are missing" relate to Python's standard library, which is huge. MicroPython has svelte versions of many of Python's standard library modules... Pick and choose what you need, given your specific context. MicroPython is pretty friendly in that respect.

FWIW, MicroPython, as a language, is a complete reimplementation of Python (and an amazing feat of engineering on the part of Damien and his collaborators).

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#36

Post by [deleted] »

jack_pp wrote: post #27
qz2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your position is unrealistic for an education setting. You’re proposing working computers and smartphones for every desk and student. Computers and apps are not standardised at all. Disparity between them and compatibility issues are a massive contention when you have lots of people to educate. Not only that, even today here in the UK, not every student has a smartphone or a home computer so you’re instantly…

You are saying that there exists a segment of the college student population that will spend 100$ on a scientific calculator but does not own a smartphone?

[deleted]

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#37

Post by znpy »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #9

Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…

> With that said, we really need to let calculators go

I honestly can't understand why hasn't anybody made a TI-compatible calculator, ideally with a clean-room-implementation OSS stack.

It could probably get most of the TI market share, and be more exciting to use.

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#38

Post by Jipazgqmnm »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #9

Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…

I don't know about the current situation but about 10 year ago, the TIs with their functional setup were _multiple_ orders of magnitude more powerful than their Casio competitors. You could chain an arbitrary amount of functions. With the Casio, when there was no special mask for your purpose, you've been out of luck.

Anyway, I still use my TI-84 Plus, meanwhile virtually on my smartphone using Wabbitemu [1].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Revsoft.Wa...

P.s. I would appreciate a comment on why people down-vote a message.

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#39

Post by colejohnson66 »

znpy wrote: post #37
parsimo2010 wrote: post #9

Relative to other graphing calculators, I've always felt that Casio's offerings were a good value relative to TI- ever since TI captured the education market they stopped being cool and definitely stopped being a good value. I think that having Python is a neat feature. I have strong opinions about calculators in general, and have owned a wide range of Casio, HP, TI, and even some old/niche ones that only real calcul…

> With that said, we really need to let calculators go I honestly can't understand why hasn't anybody made a TI-compatible calculator, ideally with a clean-room-implementation OSS stack. It could probably get most of the TI market share, and be more exciting to use.

The biggest thing is ACT/SAT approval. If that’s what you need, check out NumWorks[0]. It works on both and is completely open source (down to the schematics).

[0]: https://www.numworks.com/

Re: Casio Graphing Scientific Calculator Fx-9860GIII Comes with MicroPython

#40

Post by pansa2 »

ntoll wrote: post #35
pansa2 wrote: post #29

> Please note that MicroPython is different from the Python that runs on a computer. I once considered embedding MicroPython into a (software) product myself, but was dissuaded by the number of people who didn’t like being limited to a subset of Python. Instead I used Lua, which is much less widely-known but is small enough to embed the whole language. It’s interesting that Casio made the opposite decision. There’s d…

The "bits that are missing" relate to Python's standard library, which is huge. MicroPython has svelte versions of many of Python's standard library modules... Pick and choose what you need, given your specific context. MicroPython is pretty friendly in that respect. FWIW, MicroPython, as a language, is a complete reimplementation of Python (and an amazing feat of engineering on the part of Damien and his collaborato…

> MicroPython, as a language, is a complete reimplementation of Python

But there are plenty of differences between MicroPython and CPython [0]. Many of them (listed under “Syntax”, “Core language” and “Builtin types”) relate to the language itself rather than the standard library.

Not to mention that the baseline for those lists is CPython 3.4 - MicroPython is also missing most of the new features of CPython 3.5 - 3.9.

[0] https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/genrst/index.html

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