I have a very successful (and free) rpn calculator for iPhone for those interested: https://apps.apple.com/ae/app/rpn-30/id1451413517
“You must update to iOS 13 ...” :-/
Sorry :-/
Apple not me
What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
71–80 of 118 posts
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#72hey all -- if anyone is looking for a modern hp calc lineup equivalent, I've been super satisfied with the HP15c clone I got from https://www.swissmicros.com/products a few years back. I was rather disappointed with the 2013 HP15c limited edition re-release. Hope this throws anyone feeling looking for something in $current_year on the right track.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#73Is there a good RPN calculator currently? The HP Prime is lacking apparently, and the 50G is no longer available (and a bit old)
I don't own one, but I've heard great things about SwissMicros calculators ( https://www.swissmicros.com/products ) from users of HP calculators. The SwissMicros lineup is very similar to HP's 1980s calculator lineup. Also, the HP 12c financial calculator and the HP 35S scientific calculator are still being sold by HP.
oh shoot, I missed this comment elsewhere in the thread -- just want to say I got their HP15C equivalent years ago and it's high quality.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#74When I was starting my degree (around 96) I went to the US for a week and bought a HP48Gx since they were cheaper there. This happened a few weeks after a Swiss jet crashed departing NY and the reasons were not known at the time so the airport staff was very suspicious. When they saw the calculator and tried to do a simple test calculation and failed, I struggled to explain how use it, since it was also so new to me.…
HP48GX was the best calculator ever. I used one throughout my middle/high school.
The best features, IMO, were (0) the IR emitter and (1) the ability to program it to switch ON at a specified time and run code.
This means I could hide my calculator somewhere in a room before class started and program it to turn on halfway through class, turn the classroom TV on, turn the volume to max, and start wildly flipping to random channels.
One teacher had all of us students put our hands up and walked around the room looking for who had a remote at their desk, and I remember watching that teacher's face of horror when the TV continued flipping channels as everyone had their hands up.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#75I was forced to use an HP12C as part of my university degree. Once you get used to RPN it’s quite uncomfortable to switch back. It’s a much more intuitive way to do math once you get over the small hurdle. 15 years later and I’m still using the same calculator!
I don’t think it’s more intuitive. It’s just that you’re used to it.
With RPN you can just type facts in as you think of them, and figure out how to combine them later. With conventional entry, you have to have the entire equation in mind from the beginning, or backtrack to add brackets.
RPN has no use for brackets, because there is never any ambiguity.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#76It's simpler to implement RPN than algebraic notation with precedence. The latter requires an operation stack where operations are stacked until they encounter a lower precedence operator or the user presses =. The user types less, the computer does a lot less. I find it fun to think in RPN.
Yes, the user types less but they have to think more.
Don't get me wrong, I love RPN and I've had a stream of HP calculators through my college years (synthetic programming on the HP41!), but... they come at a cognitive price. When you see an expression, you have to process the precedence in your mind to find out the most nested expression and start entering from there.
Basically, the calculator is cheating by forcing you to do some of its job.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#77No mention of Forth? Back in the early 80's Forth was the first language available on the original Macintosh. I loved Forth, but it completely ruins you for every other non-RPN language. I remember writing an ASCII terminal (dial-up modem) application in Forth to learn the language, and afterwards every other language that I was using at the time just looked... weird. I had to perform a massive mental shift to get ba…
Do you have an example of what you'd consider typical, boring Forth code? I was trying to compare programming styles in different languages the other day by looking at different pieces of randomly selected code, on the theory that most code is probably pretty typical. So, for example, for JS I used the bisect_by function from Crossfilter2, and for Perl I used Net::DBus::Binding::Message::Error::new.
Unfortunately, all the Forth I had on hand or could easily find was one of ⓐ something I'd written myself, ⓑ something written for didactic purposes or as an example of the ideal way to do things, or ⓒ by the author of the Forth implementation it runs on. I'd argue that all of these are likely to be atypical examples of Forth style.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#78I've been experimenting with RPN user interfaces for a while; https://asciinema.org/a/391001 is a screencast of a recent prototype that uses the terminal and builds up an infix representation of the expression that generated a given result. http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/rpn-edit#50_iota_2_ln_*... is an earlier prototype that runs in the browser.
I don't think RPN is a super great fit for multitouch screens but it works really well for keyboard interfaces.
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#79I still have my HP 48g and I prefer using the dc[1] for calculations on my laptop. [1] https://linux.die.net/man/1/dc
I do my taxes every year in dc...
Re: What Is RPN? Why Did/Does HP Use RPN? Learning RPN (1999)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
For whatever reason my high school had HP48s for my junior year math class, which got replaced the following year for TIs since “that’s what you’ll be using in college”. I much preferred the RPN and ended up convincing my parents my life would be easier with a new HP49g (which wasn’t a lie, it was). That thing helped get me through my math major and I’ll always remember my old school professor who taught my complex a…
The HP48s has a much nicer keyboard than the HP49g though! HP48gx may have been a suitable upgrade instead :)
I agree with this and definitely would tell 17 year old me to go for the 48gx instead!