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Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

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Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#71

Post by crobertsbmw »

karmakaze wrote: post #69

I never use the macOS calculator app. I enter my expressions into Google search. I can't be the only one who does this. I would appreciate a better online calculator than Google web search. What do others use, WolframAlpha?

I open up a Python shell window probably 20 times a day to do simple maths…

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#72

Post by seanw444 »

karmakaze wrote: post #69

I never use the macOS calculator app. I enter my expressions into Google search. I can't be the only one who does this. I would appreciate a better online calculator than Google web search. What do others use, WolframAlpha?

If we're talking online, WolframAlpha is amazing. Used to use it all the time. Now I use Emacs Calc, since it's built right into Emacs (a keybind away), and it's pretty nice and featureful.

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#73

Post by seanw444 »

crobertsbmw wrote: post #71
karmakaze wrote: post #69

I never use the macOS calculator app. I enter my expressions into Google search. I can't be the only one who does this. I would appreciate a better online calculator than Google web search. What do others use, WolframAlpha?

I open up a Python shell window probably 20 times a day to do simple maths…

I recommend https://insect.sh (you can install it through NPM to use it locally). Does simple maths well, does functions, does units, does conversions... pretty cool shell calculator.

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#74

Post by buescher »

seanw444 wrote: post #72
karmakaze wrote: post #69

I never use the macOS calculator app. I enter my expressions into Google search. I can't be the only one who does this. I would appreciate a better online calculator than Google web search. What do others use, WolframAlpha?

If we're talking online, WolframAlpha is amazing. Used to use it all the time. Now I use Emacs Calc, since it's built right into Emacs (a keybind away), and it's pretty nice and featureful.

I like Wolfram Alpha a lot but google's calculator is faster and does a very good job with units analysis.

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#75

Post by Froedlich »

reportingsjr wrote: post #29

I definitely agree with a lot of the complaints. I truly don't understand why so many computer calculator interfaces are so awful. I've been using speedcrunch for a couple of years now and it scratches most of the itches for what I want out of a calculator. It looks fairly similar to Chalk's design as well. Very nice interface!

Another + for speedcrunch, a tool I didn't know I needed until I discovered it.

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#76

Post by shhsshs »

I love this, great idea! I don't need the majority of the fancy features but I can see the use case for them.

I built my own calculator app a while ago [0]. I've used an HP-41C as my main calculator for many years and I have not yet found a good RPN calculator app available on ALL platforms. I wanted a simple calculator that felt like an HP-41C that I can use on my phone + all desktop operating systems and get the same experience.

[0] https://github.com/shamus03/ralc (if you're on desktop, it looks much better if you install it as a PWA and resize to your preferred size)

Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

#79

Post by AdamH12113 »

w0mbat wrote: post #41

I got fed up with all these complicated calculators and re-implemented the original Mac calculator desk accessory at https://CalculatorDA.com . It does the simple things I need while giving me a nice nostalgia buzz.

I have been carrying around a copy of the Windows XP calculator ever since Microsoft decided that nobody can do both decimal values and decimal hex binary conversion without having to go through a menu to change modes. With the XP calculator, I use F5-F8 as shortcut keys for changing bases whenever I want. The Windows 10 calculator doesn't even do anything with those keys in scientific mode.
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