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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

#91

Post by omaranto »

chacha21 wrote: post #37
omaranto wrote: post #26

Looks very cool, congratulations! Have you tried Emacs Calc? Chalk reminds me of Emacs Calc, but without the symbolic computation (and without date calculations or anonymous functions).

I don't use Emacs, but I feel that people should just have access to a decent calculator without digging developer forums. As good as Emacs Calc is, we can admit that it's unlikely to be seen as an easy-to-find lightweight tool.

I'm not sure what you mean by "digging developer forums", but I fully agree with you that Emacs Calc is not a good choice for everyone, in fact, I would not recommend it to anyone that isn't already an Emacs user (but for people who are already Emacs users I do highly recommend it, since it has a ton of functionality and is an easy-to-find lightweight tool ---if you're already in Emacs anyway).

I was just curious to see if you had tried it, since it seems similar in spirit to your project, and thought you might be able to borrow some ideas from it.

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

#92

Post by zelon88 »

To be honest I read all the materials, 85% of the blog post, and your website and you still have not told me WHY software calculators are wrong.

You drone on and on and on. I'm 15 minutes into this rant of yours and I know all your personal preferences about pocket calculators and software calculators and yet no evidence to suggest why your design is actually better. No evidence to suggest that existing calculators are incorrect.

Can you please provide a real TL;DR where you provide hard proof that popular software calculators are incorrect?

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

#95

Post by shhsshs »

layer8 wrote: post #88
shhsshs wrote: post #76

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 sa…

I like it, except that the Enter symbol confuses me. I associate it with a windowing button or on/off switch. I probably would use ⏎ (U+23CE) instead.

Good suggestion. I chose that symbol because it is literally called "ENTER SYMBOL" but maybe something more universally accepted would be better.

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

#96

Post by fendy3002 »

CrendKing wrote: post #83

The one thing I don't get about all those calculator applications is the existence of the keypad. Like, the users already have the keypad right in front them called keyboard (the names literally share the "key" part). Why would anyone instead choose to use mouse to click those tiny buttons? I feel most calc designers still stuck at the skeuomorphism and never jump out of the box to think about what user really needs.…

Well until you need scientific calculator computation, such as log, sin / cos, rad / deg, root.

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

#97

Post by shhsshs »

zelon88 wrote: post #92

To be honest I read all the materials, 85% of the blog post, and your website and you still have not told me WHY software calculators are wrong. You drone on and on and on. I'm 15 minutes into this rant of yours and I know all your personal preferences about pocket calculators and software calculators and yet no evidence to suggest why your design is actually better. No evidence to suggest that existing calculators a…

The TLDR as I understand it:

- Most software calculators take up too much space. You don't need buttons on the screen, your keyboard already has the buttons.

- Software calculators don't often give good feedback of what digits/buttons are being pressed. Physical calculators keep the keys and the display in the same small visual space: you can see the buttons you're pressing and the screen at the same time, and you have good haptic feedback. Software calculators force you to trust yourself to type the exact numbers/operations you want, or look back and forth between your keyboard and the screen, which is slow. The other alternative is using the mouse to click every button, which is also slow.

And three of the requirements the author lists for a "good" software calculator:

- The calculator should not compute until you validate the full expression.

- The calculator should display the expression during input, and allow you to correct any typing error you notice.

- The calculator should display the expression that has actually been evaluated.

(end of TLDR)

Now my own opinion: an RPN calculator with a visible stack is more than enough to solve the problems that motivate points 1 + 2.

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

#99

Post by jimbosis »

shhsshs wrote: post #76

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 sa…

Have you seen Free42, "...a re-implementation of the HP-42S Scientific Programmable Calculator and HP-82240 Printer?" [0]

It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. (At one point there was even a version available on Windows Phone 8.)

Perhaps it checks your boxes of good RPN calculator, available on all platforms. I don't know how much an HP-42S feels like a 41C.

In any event, thank you for ralc. I've off and on been searching for a nice web-based RPN calculator.

[0] https://thomasokken.com/free42/

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

#100

Post by saeranv »

Halfway through your article and I 100% agree with all your complaints. I compulsively carry my T1-84 calculator everywhere since it feels like such an annoyance to have to resort to using any generic desktop calculator.

ETA: I am very impressed by your calculator so far. I thought my tmux + ipython setup was good, but this shows that I just didn't think about the possibilities of what a proper calculator app could bring to the table.

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