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Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

calcverse.live

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Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#111
post #109

I have a question about calculator building, if anyone has a suggestion. My industry revolves around quite complicated calculators, with anywhere from 10 to 50 data inputs - and the result are large projection tables and charts. These still live in excel, but I would love to move then into a web app. Is there a best practice way to go about this? I've tried basic html forms that pass to python for the number crunchin…

unless you want to dumb down the interface so it's more like a wizard, the best you can do is make a framework so the complexity is separate. ie, the business logic is separate from the application logic. without more details it's impossible to say how I'd simplify it but there's gonna be a lot of having to learn your specific use case before suggesting how to simplify it.

unfortunately the complexity has to live somewhere, the only question is how best to manage it.

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#112

I tried your interest calculator and it fails. Maybe because it accepts duration in years and I've specified 0.5 (with quarterly payouts). I didn't get any errors, just the wrong result (0). I think the main problem is the poor choice of units: user should be able to select even days as units, not just months/quarters.

Thanks a lot for reporting this! I have fixed the issue, and improved the ui of the result given by the calculator. Do let me know if there are any more changes you would like to see.

I don't see the issue being fixed: try to calculate investment of $1M with 20% annual interest for a loan with 0.5y duration. The calc says the income would be 0.

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#113
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I hated writing arithmetic in lisp even when I used it fulltime with paredit. Fortunately, many languages have a rational type, even Python, which might be more ergonomic even if ratio literals aren't supported: $ python from fractions import Fraction as f f(1, 2) + f(1, 8) + f(1, 8) # 3/4

You didn't like the parentheses and prefix operator syntax? Syntax-wise, you could use Racket (or another Scheme, with a little more difficulty) to make a very thin layer over normal Scheme, and package it into a program called `calc`, like this: user@computer:~$ calc > 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/8 $1 = 3/4 > Or do you want a bigger library of off-the-shelf numeric tools, like Python, Julia, or R?

I'm just showing that a more accessible language like Python has a repl with a ratio type.

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#115

Some comments, based purely on https://www.calcverse.live/calculators/bmi . • Keyboard accessibility is suffering, because the buttons aren’t associated with a form. Most notably, pressing Enter when one of the text boxes is selected doesn’t do anything. You should put everything inside a element, and then if you’re using , decide whether it’s type=button or type=submit. • A tad more subjective, but actual radio butt…

I have implemented most points, except the 2nd and last ones. I felt its better to have buttons as they are easier to click. I'm figuring out how to implement the last point.

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#116
post #3

While the world does AI I learn assembly

I really feel this, and I wonder whether it's us humans trying to reaffirm our higher reasoning, or whether it's a regression to trying to recapture a simpler age.

Hi noduerme, I'm the guy who wrote the original 'Kaos'. I stumbled upon the discussion about it, and have no idea how to contact you besides commenting here.

BTW assembly rocks :-).

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explained in a terrible way, it's integrals for interest if "compound daily/monthly/yearly" was an estimation using discrete intervals

you didn't really improve by hiding behind "integrals"; this is why so many kids are afraid of calculus.

There's a reason I prefaced it with "explained in a terrible way". It clicks that way in my head, might for others

Re: Show HN: While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really strange, what can I do to resolve this? My SSL cert is valid. My site doesn't collect or store any sensitive information at all.

I doubt the cert issue is on your end, it appears whenever OpenDNS (Cisco Umbrella) tries to intercept any site when it blocks it.

Thanks for your reply. Will try to contact OpenDNS.
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