[HN Gopher] 2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for re...
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2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired engineer
Author : CrankyBear
Score : 917 points
Date : 2022-09-19 19:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mainichi.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| "The number of downloads grew at a sluggish pace at first because
| the app was designed so that just one calculator is displayed on
| the smartphone's vertical screen mode, while two are shown only
| when the screen is rotated on its side. So, many users only
| thought it was a regular calculator."
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Any software calculator that has a tape feature works well for
| me, I think the built in windows calc app does.
|
| I've been using CalcTape for a few years now, it's a calculator
| and notepad in one.
|
| https://www.schoettler-software.com/en/calctape/windows
|
| I appreciate the simplicity of the side by side calculator app
| though.
| xxr wrote:
| I haven't used this app, but something that makes me smile is
| that the paid version is only 563KB (the paid version is 4.6MB,
| and I suppose it's pleasant that the ad SDKs are "only" 4 megs).
| After seeing every major app take up 100MB+ for years, I had just
| assumed that there was some kind of static packaging inherent to
| all iOS apps that jacked the deliverable size up so high. I don't
| know whether Ueda was deliberately trying to get it as small as
| possible, or if his design is so elegant that it just naturally
| led to such a tiny artifact. Either way, as long as the 3.5"
| floppy is still in its sunset period[0], I suppose it's nice that
| there's modern software that will still fit on it.
|
| [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62749310
| postalrat wrote:
| The web app version would probably be 1/10th of that.
| miniBill wrote:
| I mean... it depends what you want to support. My web
| calculator [fully client side] is 370kb of JS. It has
| features that this doesn't have (3d rendering, solving
| equations), but doesn't have code that this needs (mostly,
| the keyboard)...
| pwinnski wrote:
| On the one hand, there's your claim that a web version of
| TwinCalc should be 56.3K or so. On the other hand, there's a
| world of existing web apps which are generally very much
| larger than that.
|
| A smaller footprint than 563K would be a dubious advantage
| for web apps in either case.
| donkarma wrote:
| auggierose wrote:
| If it is an app built in Swift, then iOS and macOS ship already
| with all of its runtime libraries, so the app itself can be
| very small.
| Someone wrote:
| > there was some kind of static packaging inherent to all iOS
| apps
|
| There was for apps using Swift. Before the Swift ABI was
| frozen, iOS apps using Swift had to statically link the Swift
| standard library. Nowadays, iOS provides it as a dynamic
| library.
|
| (and having a stable ABI is quite an accomplishment for a
| language like Swift. See https://faultlore.com/blah/swift-abi/)
| saagarjha wrote:
| The Swift libraries are not all that large, perhaps a dozen
| MB or so.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| How odd. I see a lot of discussion about calculators having
| history and such, but as someone who became acquainted with
| Emacs's Calc mode at an early age, it seems so strange that
| calculators with history are a foreign concept to most people.
| MandieD wrote:
| The vast majority of people outside of Unix-adjacent computing
| have never heard of, much less used, emacs. More broadly, most
| people have never used any form of REPL, including the handy
| PowerShell that has come out of the box with Windows for a good
| decade now.
|
| This app succeeds because the developer has hit upon an
| interface that better matches normal users' mental models
| around calculators.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I love this! Also, today I learned that you can scroll through
| your history in the built-in android calculator by swiping down
| on the number input field!
| jiveturkey wrote:
| it's too bad i can only buy one copy of this app. if only apple
| would allow the purchase of 2 copies. but the universe might
| collapse then, having reached its poetic end.
| layer8 wrote:
| This would almost be unnecessary if iOS allowed two instances of
| the same app to be opened (and displayed in split view). I'm
| saying "almost" because the integrated app is of course easier
| for non power users.
| mavhc wrote:
| Wait until they try a GUI with windows
| imhoguy wrote:
| Is it only me who sees a humble man enjoying his own ikigai[0] in
| simple but challenging creation? The photo says it all.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
| frou_dh wrote:
| Similar to the 80-something Japanese woman who created an iPhone
| app relating to a doll festival, that was a big news story a
| couple of years ago.
| dm319 wrote:
| Some similarities with RPN, except instead of two calculators
| working on two registers side by side, it's one calculator
| working on the bottom of several registers.
|
| Both allow you to do complex interim calculations that can be
| hard to plan out on algebraic alone.
| dpb1 wrote:
| Some of the strong points of this calculator is the main thing I
| use in RPN calculators with stacks. It's so helpful for me to
| duplicate a value and then operate on that, and be able to throw
| it away if I mess up, sanity check from where I started at
| intermediate calculations, etc. it's not identical, but many
| points others are mentioning in this thread are what I value from
| an RPN stack based calculator.
|
| BTW, for anyone who is comfortable with RPNs, MacOS added the
| mode to their built-in calculator recently-ish. it's not terrible
| either. I've switched to it for my default experience. (even
| though nothing beats the HP 48g, as it's what I'm the most
| familiar with).
|
| Also, on the article, really cool that someone added this on
| mobile. I love hearing about devs developing something that fills
| a niche and does so well. I feel like I'm out of ideas most days.
| Good for her!
| a_e_k wrote:
| On that note, I always end up using an HP 48g emulator on my
| phone as my main calculator app. I've been using Droid48 for
| many years now [0]. I'd initially looked at most of the native
| mobile calculator apps before realizing that since I was
| comparing them all with the HP 48 experience, I might as well
| just use an emulated HP 48 and be done with it.
|
| On a laptop or desktop, though, I've come to use Emacs Calc [1]
| pretty heavily. There's a surprising amount of power in it.
| It's pretty cool to be able to do things like operate on
| matrices of symbolic expressions via a stack interface.
|
| [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48
|
| [1]
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.htm...
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I find Hiper to be almost perfect for its clearer UI than a
| rendering of a real device and, especially, for its prominent
| binary and hex radix modes.
|
| But it lacks the stack undo of the 48 emulators.
| [deleted]
| dusted wrote:
| I came here to write this.. Yeah, I'd have thought that dual-
| calculator thing was brilliant if I hadn't turned to RPN.
| deepspace wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing while reading the article. I have
| been using RPN calculators for 40 years, and it has become
| second nature to manipulate the stack to have two calculations
| going at the same time, and then merging them, if needed.
| bollu wrote:
| What's the RPN based calculator you use on your terminal? I'd
| love to learn!
| self wrote:
| dc, perhaps.
| deepspace wrote:
| To be honest, I mostly use a physical calculator
| (Swissmicros DM41L, which is an HP41CX clone). Second
| choice is the i41CX+ app on my phone. The HP41 keyboard and
| operational patterns were etched into my brain at
| university, since my first engineering calculator was an
| HP41C.
|
| I have used rpncalc and T_REX
| (https://isene.org/2021/02/T-REX.html) in the terminal, dc
| or gforth in a pinch.
| dr-neptune wrote:
| Not sure what the parent uses, but emacs has calc, which is
| a RPN calculator with lots of features (including history
| and intermediate results) and can be used in the terminal
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Wow, I need to look for more contrived but accepted user
| experiences to fix!
| wishfish wrote:
| That's a brilliant & simple idea. I love it. Makes me wonder if
| anyone's made a small screen spreadsheet? Seems like that would
| be the obvious next step.
|
| Something like a default of 3x4 or 4x4 cells. Would have most of
| the basic spreadsheet functionality, and maybe simple graphs to
| show comparisons. Interface designed for touch on a six inch
| screen.
| fomine3 wrote:
| I'd like to use this for daily driver.
| maguay wrote:
| Numbers runs on iOS--not terribly easy to use, per se, but
| absolutely gets the job done. There was a light version of
| Excel even on the BlackBerry-styled Windows Mobile phones that
| similarly was great for, oh, comparison pricing or converting
| multiple values other tiny math jobs.
|
| One specifically designed for phones with a very limited
| feature set, though? That could be very handy.
| giarc wrote:
| I've always wanted a browser extension (or similar) that opens
| a small 10x10 spreadsheet so I can quickly do some
| calculations. For example, if you are shopping online and have
| various options that all have different shipping costs etc. It
| would be nice to do a quick breakdown of costs without having
| to open Excel.
| wishfish wrote:
| It's a little surprising Google hasn't done this already. A
| small (maybe inline, maybe floating) popup that gives you a
| little grid. Would autosave to Sheets. That would be perfect.
|
| Anyways, that's a great idea you have. I never knew I wanted
| this, but now I want it very badly.
| themarkn wrote:
| It's pretty fast to pop open a new tab and visit
| sheets.new, I do this a lot but not everybody knows about
| it (and the rest of the .new TLD) The in-line floating
| thing is not too attractive to me. But yeah, new window,
| sheets.new, split screen, you're spreadsheeting before you
| know it.
| pjot wrote:
| Same goes for
|
| - docs.new
|
| - slides.new
|
| Super cool!
| giarc wrote:
| I think floating would be best. I just had a use case for
| this today. Was shopping for furnace filters online. They
| come in a variety of packs (some single, some 4, 12x). They
| don't always list the per unit cost, so it would be nice to
| quickly open a floating 10x10 table, list out a few options
| and get a per unit breakdown to find the best deal.
| aj7 wrote:
| If you paste an expression into the search box... Try it
| with (66/6)^2/2
| wolpoli wrote:
| That would be a great idea! That's the perfect use for the
| "spreadsheet implemented in Browser" submissions we have seen
| over the years!
| rayrag wrote:
| https://tinysheet.com/
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Unfortunately limited to 2x10 only
| wolpoli wrote:
| I found a few other options:
|
| http://xem.github.io/sheet/
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-
| spreadsheet/...
| shabbatt wrote:
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| What a fantastic example of "make something people want." Kudos
| to him... and so inspiring!
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| Personally I find it embarrassing that we use a device with
| gigabytes of RAM and millions of pixels to emulate a 19-button
| device from half a century ago.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Yeah buttons should be rendered with ray tracing and deep
| learning
| pvillano wrote:
| It's probably hard to come up with a better interface. A pocket
| calculator can be operated with very little cognitive load.
| It's easy to memorize because things don't move and it's easy
| to discover because ~every action is always visible.
|
| It's also good enough. Most people don't need more than a
| pocket calculator. Sometimes I use WolframAlpha, very modern,
| but I type my query on a keyboard whose design predates the
| calculator (QUERTY in <1873 vs "10-key" calculator in 1902)
| noobermin wrote:
| I think this is why I prefer using the python idle as a
| calculator. You can assign an expression to a variable, but you
| can always scan up (assuming your terminal window is tall enough)
| to see what expression you used to calculate it. People are
| saying how this is the point of memory on calculators but once
| you save to M you basically need to remember what's in there.
| Seeing what you did to calculate whatever is better.
|
| In a way then, the python idle is like this but with many
| calculators side by side.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I like qalc (https://github.com/Qalculate/libqalculate) as a
| command-line calculator. It has all the basic repl features,
| but also excellent units support and other useful math-oriented
| things.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Python is fine, although I find that Octave gets me to "doing a
| calculation" in a couple fewer keypresses.
| hnjst wrote:
| I'm still completely baffled that we nowadays almost all have in
| our pocket a device able to run something like
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/jp.yhonda/.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Just bought this for my iPad, which apple inexplicably doesn't
| bundle with their calculator app.
| icedistilled wrote:
| Why don't calculator apps at the very least display the current
| calculation like the casio FX-95? The current options of basic or
| scientific for mac/ios would be 100x better. The ticker tape only
| partially solves it.
|
| FX 95: https://www.casio.com/intl/scientific-
| calculators/product.FX...
| asimpletune wrote:
| Improving upon the design of a calculator app is incredibly
| difficult. And before people complain that it's not improved, yes
| it is. For most people, this is way better. Congrats to him, he's
| living the dream. Building software that does a job, and then
| getting paid for that software. I just hope he doesn't suffer too
| many copycat apps.
| FrasiertheLion wrote:
| This article made me realise why I use a python shell over a
| calculator app. It's nice to refer back to my previous
| computations and results. Several people here mention RPN; I
| work in tech, definitely understand stacks and get that I would
| be able to view my previous computations. Yet it's not
| something I took the time to discover, there were always other
| ways.
|
| I've always believed that there is still a lot of low-hanging
| fruit left in crafting user friendly experiences for consumer
| facing applications. Who would have guessed this would be the
| case even in the design space of something as fundamental as
| calculators! ~20k paid users seems surprisingly large. But I'm
| not plugged into the app dev scene, so perhaps this isn't
| unusual.
| gustavorg wrote:
| > I just hope he doesn't suffer too many copycat apps.
|
| There were 2k clones of flappy bird within a month of its
| release. By now there must be at least a dozen programmers
| copying this idea (Twin-Calc) for other platforms, myself
| included.
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| I don't see how this works better than any scientific calculator
| that shows history. Also don't understand why he put two sets of
| keyboards, to me it just doesn't make sense.
|
| Marginally related: if you are looking for a non-sucking
| calculator app on desktop or mobile, try an emulator of a (modern
| or retro, at your choice) HP or TI graphical calculator. My
| personal favorite is the emulator of HP Prime.
| NavinF wrote:
| Umm of course history is superior. So are named variables. You
| and me are not the target audience.
|
| Ever noticed how normal people hit both C and CE several times
| on physical calculators because it's not obvious what those
| buttons do? That's the target audience.
| codeulike wrote:
| Its immediately intuitive without having to think about it. Its
| two calculators. Its magnificent.
| effnorwood wrote:
| savrajsingh wrote:
| This is the perfect example of how we, as devs, way overthink
| what people actually want / are comfortable with.
| easygenes wrote:
| For me the killer convenience calculator on mobile has been
| Soulver. The UI is just perfect for making it easy to string
| together calculations without taking up too much screen real
| estate. Irritatingly, the Mac app is available still, but it has
| been pulled from the iOS App Store for a long time, and it's not
| on any other platforms. If something like Soulver existed cross
| platform I would have it installed on everything.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| So he took a niche device and made it an App. Smart!
|
| https://www.casio.com/us/basic-calculators/product.DV-220/
| jiveturkey wrote:
| yo dawg, i heard you like calculators ...
| pvillano wrote:
| That's a fun idea: remaking good products that no longer meet
| the volumes for mass production, but still have enthusiasts who
| could finance a limited run. Like the new Commodore 64
| paxys wrote:
| What's interesting is that saving the results of a previous
| operation to memory and recalling/clearing them (M/MR/MC buttons)
| has been standard in calculators since the very beginning. It
| just has the most non-obvious user experience in the world so
| most people don't even know about the feature.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Eh, that's not the problem being solved.
|
| I have the same issue programming when I get popups for various
| autocomplete or method description or whatever.
|
| Typically, I'm actually focused on the previous line like a
| hook into my thought process and almost need that hook to get
| into the next section.
|
| This app is just a simple example of how people visualize the
| steps into complicated stepping alongside logic.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I press both C and CE multiple times on my calculator to reset
| it so juggling those 3 M buttons is probably a bridge too far
| for my brain.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It's been a while since I used a calculator, but yeah. I know
| that the M-buttons do some storage from when I learned about
| it in high school, but that was a long time ago.
| closewith wrote:
| Despite an applied maths degree and a career in informatics,
| TIL that C is Clear Everything and CE is Clear Entry.
| Naively, I always assumed the opposite.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Chording them together means "fuck it"
| _jal wrote:
| An early form of control-alt-delete.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Alt+hold F4
| v-yadli wrote:
| which will bring you a loop of a "save before quit?"
| dialog and then killing it :D
| bitwize wrote:
| Some scientific calculators have a button marked AC for
| "all clear", also sometimes in a distinctive color so you
| know it's important. Features like that appear aimed at
| people like you and me, who aren't specially trained in
| calculator use and have to reacquire familiarity with what
| the buttons do when we use the machine upon occasion.
| julian_sark wrote:
| To be fair: if it was aimed at people who don't use desk
| calculators all day, maybe it should say "clear all". You
| know, in actual words. Or have a picture of a trash can
| on it. To me, desk calculators with CA/M/MR/MC... are a
| design fail.
| kube-system wrote:
| Being able to visually see the number would be helpful. I
| haven't seen any that visually show what is stored in memory
| until you recall it. It would be pretty neat if pocket
| calculators had a second line for that feature.
| tyingq wrote:
| Yeah, the current Windows calculator has a tab that shows the
| memory, and I do use it. It would be nice on a physical
| calculator.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| It can also be confusing and hard to use for a lot of people
| and once it's failed for a user once or twice, they'll likely
| give up with it. I have even succumbed to copy n paste as the
| cognitive load is less and safer.
|
| This however is very obvious and I think it's a great idea. If
| I had iOS I think I would install it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We could also think of it as a spreadsheet with 2 cells.
| xani_ wrote:
| I just learned RPM instead of figuring that out. RPN calc with
| 3-4 lines of stack display is just more convenient
| ketozhang wrote:
| The design is horrible and a relic of skewmorphism.
|
| Single tally memory is useful on small screens. I just wish
| they'd display the stored value somewhere.
| jonahx wrote:
| The design is:
|
| 1. Not skeuomorphic.
|
| 2. Indeed, flat.
|
| 3. Almost identical to the iPhone native calculator, except
| it uses round-edge rectangles instead of circles.
| stevage wrote:
| It's skeuomorphic in the sense that the layout is very
| similar to a physical calculator.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Nope. Skeumorphic design uses ornamentation, like
| textures and interaction animations, to mimic the
| aesthetic of a physical object. You don't even need to
| adopt an existing standard interface layout to be
| skeumorphic. Make those keys look rubber or give it a
| mock LCD display and you'd be skeumorphic even if the
| buttons were in a circle around the display.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It simulates the experience of having two iPhones with
| the calculator app open next to each-other. iPhones are
| physical objects.
| joemi wrote:
| By that logic, _any_ app is skeuomorphic by default just
| by existing. IMO that's being too liberal with the
| definition.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| No they're not. Look into the history of the term it's
| from the era where your music playing app would function
| exactly like a CD player.
|
| For example
|
| iPhone calculator is a skeuo calculator because it has
| the same layout and limitations of a physical calculator.
|
| Soulver is a non-skeuo calculator because it is built
| around the benefits of a computer and ignores the history
| of a calculator.
| thrwaway23236 wrote:
| > iPhone calculator is a skeuo calculator because it has
| the same layout and limitations of a physical calculator.
|
| In that case you can also consider the iPhone "dialer" to
| be skeuomorphic, as it has the same layout as the old
| physical buttons. The digital keyboard is also using the
| same layout as a physical keyboard.
|
| One could argue that on a touch screen, the buttons are
| there because it is the most efficient layout and not
| because it looks like a physical calculator. In that
| case, it is not skeuomorphic.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| The iPhone dialer definitely is. I'm not saying that's
| bad or anything, some things are better being
| skeuomorphic if it helps users understand the interface.
| It's just the actual user interface design discussion
| gets drowned out by how honestly for lack of a better
| word embarrassing most digital design discourse is in
| general it's been changed into more of an art direction
| debate than a UI design one.
|
| >One could argue that on a touch screen, the buttons are
| there because it is the most efficient layout and not
| because it looks like a physical calculator. In that
| case, it is not skeuomorphic.
|
| It definitely is designed to be a physical calculator
| though to the extent it is an actual copy of a famous one
| [1], and has all the limitations of a physical calculator
| even mincing the memory limitations of a physical
| calculator.
|
| [1] : https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/iphone
| _braun.jp...
| schadara wrote:
| From the second image, it appears he set the cornerRadius
| too high and the buttons became almonds. If that's what he
| was going for, then perhaps it IS skeuomorphic? /s
| samstave wrote:
| When I was a little kid in the 80s, there was a SQRT function
| on my calculator and I would typ in numbers then hit that
| button and log the results in a scratch pad...
|
| and the thing is that even using the M/MR/MC feature was
| foreign to me...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not just that people don't know about the feature. I'd
| argue having the side-by-side calculator views is fundamentally
| different (and much better) than just having a memory-
| store/memory-recall button. E.g. in this app, you get to see
| the full equations that went into a particular set of
| calculations as you go back and forth.
| romwell wrote:
| It's the Norton Commander of calculators
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Exactly, the problem with memory buttons is it's easy to
| forgot (ha!) what's in the memory. With the sibling
| calculator, you can see everything.
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| You also can't perform another calculation with the stored
| value (other than M+/M-) while also keeping the current
| accumulator.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I constantly want this feature.
|
| Everywhere.
|
| Making meetings on the outlook app on my phone for work is
| a complete and utter chore. I can't look at emails at the
| same time. While I end up popping everything out on my PC
| on my phone that's not possible.
|
| This is basically the same thing and on a desktop I'd
| pushed I end up dumping all the info in the scratch pad of
| an Emacs session phones just don't let you do that.
| mrb wrote:
| On standard Android phones you can do it. I just tried
| split screen (GMail on top, Google Calendar at the
| bottom) and you can create or edit a calendar event while
| having an open email on top. Looks like this on my phone
| (Android 13): https://ibb.co/51skSCw
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Yes but they mean having an Outlook email open while
| making a calendar event in Outlook. It's the same app.
| Since they mentioned Outlook at all it's almost certainly
| a work email.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Just use the web version of Outlook and it's possible.
| psKama wrote:
| That's still possible to do on Android as long as the app
| allows for that. For example when you compose e new email
| in Gmail Android app, it starts as a new instance/app and
| you can split screen, so that you can go through other
| emails on top half while writing a new email at the
| bottom half, which is pretty handy when you try to refer
| to some other email or to fetch some info from another
| email.
| jorvi wrote:
| I believe Samsungs have this feature.
|
| I wish iPhones either supported it in landscape, or got a
| feature called 'slide-over' from iPadOS, where you can
| float another app on top of your current app, off-screen
| to the right. There's a little edge you can then grab and
| pull over your current app to quickly peek or copy info
| back-and-forth. When you're done you just slide back the
| 'slide-over' app.
|
| It's a really clever feature. And I know swiping on the
| gesture bar exist, but it doesn't have nearly the same
| rapid fluidity of slide-over.
| baq wrote:
| modal windows should be banned by the geneva
| convention...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I use M, MR, MC buttons but having 2 calculators is kind of
| cool too, it is a fun idea.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I was reading about doing log-log calculations on slide rules
| the other night, and I can tell you that M/MR/MC is even worse
| than that.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| I know this feature, but I'd much more prefer the workflow of
| having two calculators side by side.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| A light dawns, thank you.
| irrational wrote:
| I know about the feature, I just have no clue how to use it and
| don't use a calculator enough to bother looking up how to use
| it.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I can highly recommend https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/notecalc
|
| Web based Soulver-like calculator that is a bit more like
| scripting.
|
| totally different, but wonderful.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Nice. Gonna bookmark this one.
| haint_ wrote:
| This is great, but I can't seem to copy the result. Is it just
| me?
| anotheryou wrote:
| oh weird, not just you. In the export preview you can, hope
| there is a better way though.
| anotheryou wrote:
| found it out:
|
| _hit ctrl+c in any line_ (without any character selection)
| to copy the result.
| haint_ wrote:
| Thank you, but I wish we could manually select it and copy
| the desired part (for example when converting days to
| seconds I'm only concern about the actual seconds, not the
| "seconds" suffix)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| So is this significantly better than just using store and recall?
| flowerbreeze wrote:
| In my opinion it is, because I don't need to recall what I
| recall.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| When I need to recall what I recall, I just hit [MR].
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Which causes you to then lose what you have typed in the
| screen already.
|
| TBH, these semi-snarky "How is this any different from
| MS/MR?" responses are like "Why should a CPU ever need more
| than 2 registers?" to me.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Which causes you to then lose what you have typed in the
| screen already._
|
| Then hit [MX] instead. Problem solved with 1 button
| instead of a whole extra calculator.
|
| _" Why should a CPU ever need more than 2 registers?"_
|
| The question in this case is "Why should a calculator
| only have 2 registers". This approach doesn't scale
| beyond 2 numbers?
|
| Personally, I prefer RPN where I have a whole stack to
| work with.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| What is the [MX] button? I don't think I've ever seen
| that on a calculator.
|
| TBH, though, this is still kind of like arguing that
| people should never need GUIs because you can do
| everything on the command line. There is a pretty
| obvious, fundamental difference being able to see
| everything on the screen at the same time, vs having to
| remember what you stored in memory (and what calculations
| went into it).
|
| As for RPN, while I agree most people are never taught
| RPN.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| [MX] = Memory Exchange --- Swap display and memory
|
| A better, more intuitive solution than any of the above
| with available screen real estate is a history tape of
| prior resultants created automatically.
|
| Multiple prior resultants (not just 2) always available
| to view --- no action required.
|
| To recall a number from the tape into the active
| accumulator for further manipulation, simply click the
| number.
|
| To remove a number from the tape, click and drag right or
| left. To reorder, click and drag up or down.
| [deleted]
| tremon wrote:
| But then, why should my phone screen be limited to only 2
| calculators?
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Instead of more calculators, all you really need is just
| better design. See above.
| criddell wrote:
| It's only $3. How much better does it need to be to be worth
| $3?
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| What happens if I am working with 3 or 4 different values?
|
| This duplicate calculator method doesn't scale too well. A
| history tape is a better option --- just as intuitative but
| more capable/flexible.
| criddell wrote:
| Are you looking for people to tell you this is what you
| should be using?
|
| If it doesn't work for you, then use something else.
| outworlder wrote:
| Then you start approaching spreadsheet territory.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| With a history tape calculator, you can easily and
| intuitively juggle 5 or 6 different numbers --- not just
| 2.
| naikrovek wrote:
| in terms of ease of use and visibility yes I would say this is
| more than significantly better.
| zem wrote:
| absolutely
| injidup wrote:
| A spreadsheet with two cells only. Take that bloatware excel!
| jiveturkey wrote:
| underrated comment
| syntheticnature wrote:
| "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said
| faster horses." -- attributed, apparently wrongly, to Henry Ford.
|
| Those of us who know RPN and other options are likely to squirm
| at this app, but in this case the "faster horse" approach seems
| to be easy for people to pick up and understand.
| klipt wrote:
| Horses are self driving so if you count the billions invested
| into self driving cars, I guess we really do want faster horses
| ;-)
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Not aware of any horse from which I can watch a movie on and
| not have to control at all.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Depends if the horse knows where it's going. If it's going
| home, no problem.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| There are plenty of accounts of drunk Victorian men letting
| their horses lead themselves home.
| ctrlc-root wrote:
| If you're looking for something similar on the desktop I use
| SpeedCrunch to address the same need. You can chain calculations
| and refer back to previous entries while seeing your history.
|
| https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/
| mjcohen wrote:
| Can't open it on MacOS Monterey because owner cannot be
| verified.
| LordHeini wrote:
| Not sure if this app can do stuff like cross multiplication or
| run the same operations on both calculators.
|
| But this app reminded of something similar.
|
| There is an old school double mechanical pinwheel calculator:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnlzKCFP0sU
|
| It was probably mostly used for coordinate calculations.
|
| I own one of those brunsvigas (the single stage one) and it is
| fascinating what these things can do.
|
| A mechanical calculator with enough didits can solve cross
| multiplication rather easily.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The base calculator on iPhone is pretty horrible in my
| experience, but I guess I'm not the target audience. I've really
| enjoyed eduCalc Classic. It has graphing functionality plus a
| "guess the function" game based off graph + table which has
| become my go to plane activity. The unit converter is super
| useful too.
| fsckboy wrote:
| iPhone calculator apps are one of those areas I'm "happy to pay
| for an app but I don't want to pay for a dozen of them to
| figure out which are garbage and which I like"
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The one on windows is terrible and getting worse with each
| iteration. It's obvious no one with any authority cares and
| doesn't understand why they should.
|
| Can you drag and drop a number into the calculator? No. I rest
| my case.
| mavhc wrote:
| It's open source, just add the feature yourself
| DevX101 wrote:
| The default macOS calculator app is also terrible. I can't
| figure out how to do simple multiplication on it. I'm sure
| there's an answer but I also don't care to find out. If me
| typing `5*6` then clicking enter doesn't yield the expected
| result then the UX is the problem, not me.
| ghewgill wrote:
| If you have an Enter button on the screen, then you are in
| RPN mode [1]. See the View menu to turn off RPN mode.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
| mejutoco wrote:
| What is even worse is the ipad has no default calculator (or
| weather app).
|
| I was so surprised it did not exist I ported the iphone app as
| a pwa using Typescript and wrote about it here.
|
| https://mejuto.co/the-ipad-did-not-have-a-calculator-so-i-po...
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| iPad finally [0] has a default weather app in iPadOS 16, but
| still no calculator.
|
| [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156804/apple-
| weather-app...
| vxNsr wrote:
| What's even harder to understand is why there isn't a good
| 3rd party iPad calculator app. This doesn't feel like a
| difficult problem to solve, and yet here we without an
| intuitive, good looking calculator for the iPad.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Last time I link to my project, I promise. I think it
| really applies in this case. https://getcalculator.app/
|
| It is a pwa, so you can add it to the home screen.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I saw that but I don't like it because it uses periods
| instead of commas.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I see, you mean for the thousands separator. It was not
| localized, you are right.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| just wanted to link Craig's response to why there isnt a
| calculator for iPad: https://youtu.be/Q2aaCDNjWEg?t=900
| vxNsr wrote:
| Yea yea yea. That's why I said 3rd party. I know they
| long ago decided not to make an app and have given up on
| the idea. But you'd think someone would step up in their
| place and make something useful.
| tobr wrote:
| What a wonderful kludge. People can't imagine that they would be
| able to go back and edit, or even see, the history of their
| calculations, so putting two calculators side by side seems like
| a brilliant idea.
|
| It's like if a new word processor consisted of two faithfully
| recreated typewriters, with a special button to send the most
| recently typed word back and forth between them.
| kube-system wrote:
| > It's like if a new word processor consisted of two faithfully
| recreated typewriters, with a special button to send the most
| recently typed word back and forth between them.
|
| There's a lot of diff tools that essentially do exactly this.
| jldugger wrote:
| Indeed, this is, like, a solved problem on every other
| platform! Apple instead designs their apps after tech from the
| 80s[1] and is now stuck there for life.
|
| [1]: https://www.creativebloq.com/design/iconic-calculator-
| inspir...
| pwinnski wrote:
| Indeed, it's a solved problem on iOS too! This story isn't
| about someone releasing a new app into a desolate marketplace
| without any calculator apps (and hey, turn that iOS default
| calculator sideways for some fun), it's a human interest
| story about someone releasing a new app into an already-
| crowded market with a slightly new twist, and finding success
| there.
| vxNsr wrote:
| The issue is that the default Calc doesn't let you see history
| and nearly every single 3rd party calc doesn't follow iOS
| design principles, just doesn't look very good, and are often
| inexplicably slow.
| brimstedt wrote:
| Why does a calculator need to look good?
| vxNsr wrote:
| Why does anything need to look good?
| asddubs wrote:
| a calculator with a history being superior was my first thought
| too. there are advantages to this approach too, however. The
| history is selective, so if you make a mistake/typo, that isn't
| now permanently in your history as a footgun to go back to and
| re-make. here you have two states and you have full control
| over them.
|
| of course you could also just have a history where you can
| delete individual items, but this also makes the interface more
| complicated and might not be as intuitive (and requires more
| discipline)
| jjnoakes wrote:
| It'd be cool to take this a step further - allow for a tree-like
| setup of as many calculators as you want. Each number in one
| calculator's equation could be expanded out into a separate
| calculator where the number was computed, etc.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Memoize and precompute every calculation over a merkle tree
| distributed on a decentralized network using content
| addressable memory hashed to every calculation as the hash you
| say?
|
| Yeah love it.
| fyloraspit wrote:
| This is basically the same reason I default to speedcrunch for my
| calculator app. It has a nice visible and interactive history of
| calculations.
| iisan7 wrote:
| Currently a big fan of https://clcalc.net/.
|
| I went through calculator withdrawal after I left Windows XP
| and the great (for its time) Powertoy Calculator at
| https://www.rarst.net/software/powertoy-calculator/.
|
| I wanted to like speedcrunch but I abandoned it, because I've
| found that it takes longer to load (4-5 seconds or more) than I
| need to have it open (1-2 seconds).
| haint_ wrote:
| Thanks, it works great, but I found it better to have 2
| sides: expressions on the left and results on the right.
| Maybe I'm already too familiar with Numi, lol.
| chacha21 wrote:
| An opportunity to post again my thoughts about software
| calculators !
|
| https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| Have you ever tried Qalculate? I don't see it mentioned in your
| article. It feels like it addresses most of your points for
| creating Chalk, and it's already cross-platform.
| chacha21 wrote:
| Most people didn't understand that my goal was not to
| benchmark all existing calculator apps. It is on purpose that
| I did not mention all "pretty good" softwares, because I
| cannot know them all.
|
| The article I wrote wants to mention every point that should
| be adressed (in my opinion) to make a good calculator.
| Qalculate, like many others, does address some of them.
|
| But as far as I know, only Chalk addresses _all_ of them.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| My daughter is struggling with this problem: on TI-84s, "(-) 3
| x^2 Enter" gives -9. Personally, I think that if you have a
| dedicated negation operator it should have a higher precedence
| than power, but at the very least the calculator could highlight
| what it's doing.
|
| "Hypercalc" the Android app does it, but TI-84 is the standard..
| weberer wrote:
| I'm not sure what the parenthesis around the negative sign is
| supposed to accomplish. Generally you put it around two or more
| operators.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| It's how the key is labeled.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > a dedicated negation operator it should have a higher
| precedence than power
|
| I prefer the traditional precedence; it ensures - 3 ^ 2 = 0 - 3
| ^ 2
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I understand the argument, I just wish that the most standard
| school calculator would highlight somehow what it's doing
|
| Another one is "2 ^ 1 / 2 Enter". Some calculators give 1,
| newer ones give sqrt(2).
| macintux wrote:
| Obligatory but futile plug for HP RPN calculators.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Seconded. But I'm afraid RPN is an endangered species. Who's
| learning it anymore?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Probably every computer science student learns it in order
| to implement something useful after learning about the
| stack.
| ilos wrote:
| aj7 wrote:
| A huge strength of the original HP9100A programmable calculator,
| http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/HP/HP.9100...,
| was that ALL 3 rpn stack registers were visible AT ONCE ON THE
| CRT.
|
| So he has resurrected the original blank slate engineer's intent;
| Osborne realized that people would be uncomfortable "knowing"
| stuff was in hidden registers, as apparently a great deal of non-
| technical people are today, 52 years later.
| Severian wrote:
| Wow, that's a good looking brochure. I always loved that style
| of illustration.
| quartz wrote:
| The best feature on the Mac's built in calculator is the paper
| tape ([?]+t) which I stumbled on ages ago while accidentally
| having the calculator open and trying to open a new tab in my
| browser.
|
| I always leave it open now and it has saved me countless times.
| Really with the iOS version had this feature built in as well.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! Interestingly, I found it weird how the app
| handles order-of-operations.
|
| That is, if you type 1 + 2 / 2, the answer shows up as 2 and
| the paper tape shows 1 + 2 / 2 = 2
|
| However, if you type 1 + 2 = / 2 (that is, you type equals
| after the 1 + 2, which will show 3 on the screen, before typing
| the / 2 part), the last line of the paper type shows
| 1 + 2 / 2 = 1.5
|
| They need to add some parentheses in there.
| contingencies wrote:
| It's the accepted order of operation in maths that you
| resolve multiplication and division before addition and
| subtraction.
|
| While the single-value-view of a calculator removes visual
| context, if you are banging out multi-step calculations as a
| power user not having the standard order of operations would
| be odd.
|
| The workaround, as you say, is to just press enter (equals)
| after each required subtotal. This is pretty semantically
| clear, that is - if you consider a traditional keyboard to
| even be a thing that young people are familiar with - and
| that is getting arguable!
|
| Key corollary issues to the single-value-view nature of
| computer calculators are that they pull a lot of (now obtuse)
| cultural context from physical calculators plus regular
| mathematical context, none of which is obvious to occasional
| computer calculator software users.
|
| It's probably high time this stuff was rejigged. Thanks for
| the paper tape tip!
| 5fOleL5Eo2So8qi wrote:
| Their stated issue is that pressing enter after the
| 'subtotal' is _not_ clear because it shows as `1 + 2 / 2`
| in the history instead of `(1 + 2) / 2`.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not arguing that the results from the
| calculator are wrong, and I totally agree that how it
| handles order-of-operations is correct.
|
| What I am arguing is that the visual display in the "Paper
| Tape" view is wrong because it displays different answers
| for the same values.
| contingencies wrote:
| Oh sorry totally missed that 5AM here :)
| nonsapreiche wrote:
| or a /n
| wazoox wrote:
| Qalculate as such a feature and is my preferred calculator app
| :)
| faxmeyourcode wrote:
| Woah, thanks! This is an awesome feature I never would have
| found on my own
| kaushikc wrote:
| Thanks! This is handy.
| aasasd wrote:
| Android's calculator also has the history, invoked by pulling
| down on the display part. (Perhaps obvious to everybody here,
| but after the discussion on how the memory function is unclear
| to people, I'm not so sure.) Also that history is saved between
| launches, which happens to be extra useful for me.
| paledot wrote:
| No, I've been using the Android calculator for years and
| never realized that it could do that. This is the problem
| with "clever" UX...
| aasasd wrote:
| Coincidentally, history is also available via the three-
| dots menu =)
| wolpoli wrote:
| I never clued in to the fact that the little bar below the
| calculator screen meant that you could pull it down to show
| history either.
| crumpled wrote:
| History is nice. I do wish it had the memory buttons.
| aasasd wrote:
| You can just select and copy, and then paste. The whole
| expression is editable as a line of text.
| crumpled wrote:
| Thanks to this post, I played with the history and discovered
| that if you tap an expression in your history, it becomes the
| current expression.
| contravariant wrote:
| Oh, that is useful.
|
| Now if only I could calculate the log of something by
| pressing 'log' that would be nice.
| tzot wrote:
| I think that my Android phone (a Chinese model with Android
| 11 Go) has _the_ Android calculator, which IIRC was based
| on the old SGI Irix calculator.
|
| If to the right of the 4 basic operators +, -, x, / you
| have a vertical strip (greenish in my case), you can slide
| it to the left and have access to various other
| operators/functions, including log.
|
| Being based on the old SGI calculator, you can also slide
| any result to the left to get as many digits after the
| decimal point as you like.
|
| e.g. slide in the extra ops, press p, then start sliding
| the 3.1415... result.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Seems like if you allowed swapping out a background set of sub
| calculators, and provide inter-calculator ops on the front two,
| you've recreated an elegant cross between the RPN and standard
| calculator models.
| apike wrote:
| > For example, if a user calculates "89 x 15 = 1335" on one
| calculator and taps the arrow key, the result "1335" will be
| displayed on the other calculator, allowing the user to continue
| a problem while the previous equations are still shown on the
| screen. This makes it easy to notice errors.
|
| While the UI is very different, the key benefit described here
| reminds me a lot of Soulver: https://soulver.app/
|
| I love Soulver for how quickly it lets you throw together quick
| guesstimates and sanity checks. The ability to incorporate
| previous results by reference and update those on the fly greatly
| improves the clarity and my confidence in my experience.
| nick0garvey wrote:
| I make heavy use of Soulver. Really quick way to do some quick
| calculations with good unit conversion.
|
| e.g. I can write hosts = 100; disk_space_used = 10MiB/s * hosts
| * 3 days as TiB
|
| And it works as expected. Powerful tool when doing capacity
| planning or other load calculations.
| l1tany11 wrote:
| A lot of these apps have really cool features, but what I miss
| most from my Ti-89 titanium days back in high school was the
| readability of the input and output formulas. The pretty print
| feature becomes increasingly useful as computation gets more
| complex. Adding these natural language features for things like
| built in dimensional analysis would really take it to the next
| level (as things like units were a slow pain on the ti).
|
| Drawing an integral with limits, fractions, exponents, etc on
| the screen in normal notation provides much easier error
| checking when your inputs get longer and contain more and more
| syntax like commas, parentheses, etc.
| m12k wrote:
| Have you tried the Wolfram Alpha iOS app? It's my go-to
| simply because it lets me enter the whole formula,
| parentheses and all, instead of having to chop it up. But it
| also pretty-prints the input after you enter it.
| maleko48 wrote:
| Wabbitemu has been my go-to backlit Ti-84 emulator for years
| on Android. I reach for it before stock calculators every
| time. :)
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I really want to code a calculator app one day that would
| take input as RPN, but produce an editable pretty print
| formula instead of just the resulting stack.
| culturestate wrote:
| I _love_ Soulver, and I hope Zac is at least considering a
| version for iPad OS.
|
| I switched my portable setup from a MacBook to an iPad Pro last
| year and Soulver is one of a handful of small-but-useful Mac-
| only apps that I really miss when I'm not at my desk.
| vl wrote:
| What's strange is that they used to have Soulver for
| iPhone/iPad/Mac and then discontinued this version.
| wejick wrote:
| I just found vscode extension with similar functionality, I can
| imagine using this from time to time. saving time of opening
| spreadsheet
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=nortakal...
| spicybright wrote:
| Plus one for these sorts of apps! I personally use Numi.
| [deleted]
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Looks a lot like Numi (https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi), which
| I've used for years and found to be extremely useful. (In fact,
| they're so similar, I wonder if one is a riff off the other.)
|
| For non-Mac, there's an open-source web app called that's
| similar and looks nice too (haven't used it much):
| https://github.com/sharkdp/insect
| donatj wrote:
| I'll need to give Soulver a shot. I use Calca almost every day,
| and it seems very similar.
|
| http://calca.io/
| pony_sheared wrote:
| I loved Calca, paid and used it for years, but it seems to
| have stopped development and I switched OS... So I ended up
| falling back to Excel
| Minor49er wrote:
| Every screenshot on the homepage shows an empty window
| phito wrote:
| They're gifs...
| GranPC wrote:
| A nice alternative for Linux users that I can recommend is
| NaSC. Unfortunately not very actively maintained, but I'd say
| it's very much usable: https://github.com/parnold-x/nasc
| gnyman wrote:
| I do think Soulver would be a better choice for many. But it is
| much more powerful, allowing you to do conversions and labels.
|
| So the simplicity of just having two calculators side by side
| and a fast way to transfer the results is probably exactly what
| some people need and want. Zero learning curve, just two
| calculators doing exactly what you expect.
|
| I'm always fascinated by apps and programs that does exactly
| one thing, but does it really well (sometimes referred to as
| the Unix Philosophy). I feel it's harder to find tools and apps
| like these nowadays. Not sure if there are less or if they are
| just harder to find because of the huge number of apps overall.
|
| [Edit] Writing this comment actually reminded me of this blog
| https://onethingwell.org/ which highlights software like this.
| Gonna try to contact the author and see if they want to add
| this one :-)
| etoulas wrote:
| There's also https://numi.app/
| m_eiman wrote:
| I like Soulver, and also Tydlig:
|
| http://tydligapp.com/
| Y-bar wrote:
| I love Tydlig!
|
| But have not seen a single update in many years now, and
| there are a few rough edges in iOS 15 I wish they had fixed.
| Is it abandoned?
| nordicio wrote:
| Shameless plug for my app Kalkyl which I just released 3.0 of
| that adds functionality like this + collaborative editing and
| sharing, dimensional analysis, arbitrarily complex unit
| conversions, and possibility to define your own functions.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/se/app/kalkyl/id519933025?l=en
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Oh this looks great! I use Numi but it is a bit too simple.
|
| https://github.com/nikolaeu/Numi
| WiSaGaN wrote:
| This is the innovation that everybody would see how obvious it is
| once it's out. And yet no one thought about making it for a very
| long time.
| Mathmanjetson wrote:
| asimjalis wrote:
| This can also be used for what if scenarios based on an
| intermediate result.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Reminds me of a two stack push down automata. Stack programming
| languages. Forth lang.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| Neat feature, IIRC Apple does not have a default calculator app
| because they can't make one that sets it apart from other apps as
| is the 'Apple way'. Maybe they should just adopt this one.
| [deleted]
| kevinslashslash wrote:
| It's just the iPad doesn't have a default calculator app
| https://www.howtogeek.com/820792/where-is-the-calculator-app...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Both iOS and MacOS have default calculator apps. They should
| look familiar: he copied the interface design exactly for his
| app.
| ape4 wrote:
| I first thought it was going to show results in hex and decimal
| at the same time.
| spc476 wrote:
| I wrote my own desktop programming calculator that shows signed
| and unsigned decimal, octal, hexadecimal and binary at the same
| time. It also allows you to select 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or
| 64-bit calculations, and do either signed extend (for
| converting from a lower bit to higher bit legnth) or zero
| extend. No floating point results though.
|
| It was a fun project to work on.
| 5fOleL5Eo2So8qi wrote:
| The hard part of writing a calculator app is not parsing `0.1`
| versus `.1`. That's trivial. The hard part of writing a
| calculator app is getting precise answers instead of floating-
| point answers, and given that he thinks the hard part is parsing
| `.1`, it probably gets it wrong.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Solved by https://www.hboehm.info/new_crcalc/CRCalc.html
|
| Also, this is in the Android stock calculator so lifting the
| code over is easy. See also
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2911981
| outworlder wrote:
| That's a really large cognitive leap from such a small amount
| of data.
|
| Have you considered that they may not be using floating point
| numbers at all? They might be using arbitrary precision
| arithmetic. That was probably implemented by a library. So not
| as much effort as you would think.
| chongli wrote:
| It's interesting but the duplicate sets of buttons are a big
| waste of space. My favourite free calculator app is Desmos
| Scientific (by the makers of the graphing calculator) [1]. This
| app gives you as many entry lines as you like and they all remain
| live. You can also define variables and functions in one line and
| use them in another. In effect, it's like a single column from a
| spreadsheet.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/desmos-scientific-
| calculator/i...
| furyofantares wrote:
| This seems pretty smart to me.
|
| I think it's being dumped on because it's a "dumb" solution to
| something that is a non-problem for all of us here, which is
| probably why I've never seen this solution before. None of us
| would think of it.
|
| But I think it's true that while most everyone knows how to use
| the most basic functions of a calculator, most people don't get
| any further than that, and this allows them to.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Although Soulver like apps are definitely a better solution. I
| actually think this 2 calculator app is kinda genius in the
| sense that people over 60 can instantly understand it and fit
| it into their workflow.
| codeulike wrote:
| I have a degree in Mathematics and I can never remember what C
| and CE buttons on a calculcator are supposed to do. If you only
| use them occasionally and in a hurry most calculator apps are
| frustratingly unfriendly.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm actually kind of shocked. The calculator apps emulate a
| calculator, but they don't take any advantage of having the phone
| screen. A proper calculator app would allow you to type
| 1.6*2/3
|
| and display the equation on the screen, not just the 3.
| newtritious wrote:
| This one does:
|
| https://jacobdoescode.com/technicalc
| WalterBright wrote:
| That looks pretty sweet!
| WalterBright wrote:
| dang, IOS 13 or later.
| FilterSweep wrote:
| > It is also possible to perform different computations on each
| calculator. This function comes in handy when the user wants to
| compare prices to determine which store product is cheaper by the
| gram, for example.
|
| This adds another use-case outside of the M functions on a
| standard calc :)
| zie wrote:
| Neat, but a log of transactions would do the same thing, easier
| wouldn't it? RPN calculators tend to do this nicely.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Yes, but not as fast and intuitive, especially for people of a
| certain age who are used to working with a desk calculator
| nearby at all times.
| pshc wrote:
| This two-calculator setup has the advantage of being intuitive
| to anyone despite having only two storage slots. Or rather
| _because_ it has only two storage slots and they're always
| visible in fixed places.
| mrb wrote:
| What I want is a phone app calculator that works like the Python
| REPL/console. Save ALL previous calculations. Display the last
| dozen or so. Can scroll through them. Tap on one to recall it,
| edit one number, recompute. Done.
|
| This would beat by far the convenience and usability of this
| 2-in-1 calculator. I would KILL to have this.
|
| In fact, on my laptop, I use the Python REPL as a calculator. I
| hit Ctrl-T python ENTER. It opens a terminal and I start typing
| 48*152 ENTER and I see the result. The history of calculations is
| saved. I can access previous calculations, edit one number and
| recompute. I see the last 100 lines or so, on one screen.
|
| The only one somewhat usable Python REPL on Android is "Pyonic
| Python 3 interpreter" but it's clumsy to use as a calculator
| because it uses the standard alphabetic keyboard so you have to
| keep switching to the special characters layout to type math
| operators (-+/...) If this ONE detail would be fixed, and with
| some minor UI polish I believe it could become more popular than
| the 2-in-1 calculator...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| qalc (https://github.com/Qalculate/libqalculate) is my command-
| line calculator of choice. Its killer feature IMO is the units
| support
| mrb wrote:
| Very cool ! For units conversion I use GNU Units. But qalc
| seems to combine the benefits of both the Python REPL and GNU
| Units. I just tried the command-line version and noticed it
| doesn't support recalling the history (UP arrow) and editing
| calculations. This is unfortunately a deal-breaker :-( Don't
| have time to submit a patch.
| patrec wrote:
| It does! Via readline. There must be a problem with your
| build.
|
| Also, you can get this functionality for even your broken
| build (or other interactive commandline apps that have no
| edit history) by just doing something like:
| alias qalc='rlrwap qalc'
| mrb wrote:
| Ah, i must not have compiled it with libreadline-dev...
| And I didn't know about rlwrap!
| odabaxok wrote:
| The built in Android calculator worked like this for ages and
| it keeps history forever.
| mrb wrote:
| The built-in calc sucks: when the keyboard is displayed to
| edit the current expression, the app can only display ONE
| previous expression at a time. Sometimes I calculate things
| and need to refer to 2 or more previous results. I would have
| to copy paste them one at a time (cumbersome) or memorize
| them.
|
| If only it could display about a dozen previous results while
| the keyboard is active... With a Python REPL I can just
| assign intermediate results to variables.
| cole-k wrote:
| If you know an APL-like or are willing to learn enough to use
| as a calculator (there are unfortunately some uncommon things
| like % being division), there's J on iOS:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/j901/id1483497239. There ought to
| be a way to get it on Android.
|
| I have an older version of it and it works fine although the
| keyboard is a little clunky. However, you need to swipe to get
| to previous computations. I'm not sure if they changed that in
| the new version.
| goplayoutside wrote:
| I've been using an app called Calctape[0] for years that sounds
| similar to what you're describing.
|
| It's essentially a 4-function calculator that records every
| step on tape, but you can edit any digit anywhere and all
| related steps are immediately recalculated, like on a
| spreadsheet.
|
| [0] https://calctape.app/
| mrb wrote:
| Interesting. Not exactly what I described though (sorry I did
| not explain very well.) What I meant, you type 2
| calculations: > 1+1 2 > 10+10
| 20
|
| Then if you tap the first line ("1+1") my ideal REPL would
| add it to the bottom: > 1+1 2 >
| 10+10 20 > 1+1_ (with the cursor here ready to
| edit it)
|
| Then you can for examlpe change a 1 to 2, then type ENTER:
| > 1+1 2 > 10+10 20 > 1+2 3
|
| That way you can easily compute a few things, then compare
| both the expressions and results of the last few
| calculations, and quickly make edits/corrections as needed.
| denizozger wrote:
| http://tydligapp.com/ sounds like what you might be looking
| for.
| supernova87a wrote:
| > ... _Ueda recalled, "I thought it'd be easy, but it was
| unexpectedly hard." ... For example, while there are users who
| input 0.5 by tapping "0," the decimal point, and then "5," there
| are also users who only input the decimal point and "5," while
| omitting the "0." He said, "There were around 100 types of these
| sort of conditions, and it was a lot of work to solve them_."
|
| I wonder what other kinds of non-trivial calculator behaviors he
| had to rediscover from scratch?
| ghoward wrote:
| I wrote a `bc` implementation.
|
| There are more than you would think, yes, but not _terribly_
| bad. I think he exaggerated a little, and `bc` has more than
| just a simple calculator.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| About this specific case: I also never knew using ".5" to mean
| "0.5" is a thing, until I lived in the US.
|
| Not sure if it's a US thing or Western world thing, my country
| (not Japan, but also in East Asia) just doesn't use it.
| loonster wrote:
| Tangently related... In drafting, with metric numbers a
| leading zero is required. With English Numbers, omitting the
| leading zero is proper.
| retcore wrote:
| Product of the English system here: what are "English
| numbers"?
|
| I've never seen 0.5 written ".5" going back to Principia.
| loonster wrote:
| In the drafting world, inch units are commonly referred
| to as English. So if things are drafted properly, .500
| would be 1/2 an inch and 0.5 would be 1/2 a millimeter.
|
| (Things are rarely drafted according to specs.)
| nemacol wrote:
| I picked this up from Excel as it defaults to adding the 0 in
| "general" formatting.
|
| Without a decimal it will strip leading zeros by default, a
| setting that has caused me hours of frustration over the
| years.
| paledot wrote:
| It's not particularly common in Canada, although I do see it
| occasionally. The principal problem is that a dot (especially
| handwritten) is easy to miss, whereas an unexpected leading
| zero induces the reader to check for a dot.
|
| I don't press the zero button on my calculator when inputting
| values, though, since it's an extra keystroke for literally
| nothing.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Probably your calculators all support it.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Yeah they do, just didn't know this notation (convention?).
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Oddly, I don't think I've ever noticed the zero being
| omitted except casually or to save space in a table, in
| English. I would expect ordinary writing to include the
| zero.
| NavinF wrote:
| That's surprising. People don't say stuff like "try setting
| power level to point three"? Do they use a different word for
| the decimal separator?
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Nope, we always say "zero point three" (in our native
| language, of course).
| brewdad wrote:
| While I tend to use the verbal shortcut, your way is much
| less likely to be misinterpreted.
|
| "Set the power to point three" sounds the same orally as
| "Set the power two point three"
|
| The zero makes it unambiguous.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| It also helps that in my language, zero, point, and all
| the numbers are all one-syllable, hehe
| gugagore wrote:
| "to" is often reduced to something like "tuh", whereas
| "two" never is.
|
| Except in deliberate word-by-word pronunciation, "one two
| three" and "one to three" sound different in native US
| English.
| [deleted]
| tempodox wrote:
| This is such a nice example of how relatively simple ideas can
| still be of huge utility.
| mikewarot wrote:
| This UI has a better _impedance match_ to the way he, and many
| people who used desk calculators, think. It 's quite elegant.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| I find it to be very japanese. elegance expressed in such a
| simple form. blindingly obvious ... now. so hard to arrive at
| this design choice. i love this. it's poetic.
| PTOB wrote:
| That's a great way to use that term. I like it very much.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Simple and effective.
| adrianomartins wrote:
| Wow, this is some inspiration right here. Never too late! Also,
| do you have a pain, build a solutions! Congrats to that retired
| engineer!
| pluijzer wrote:
| > Never too late!
|
| From your comment and some other comments and the way the
| article is written I gather that the engineers age is seen as
| something novel.
|
| Do people really see 63 as an newsworthy fact? Not trying to
| troll, I honestly wonder. It is 4 years from retirement in my
| country and I see many other achievements come from much older
| people.
|
| I just don't see 63 as anything special or old.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's unusual for people in that age group to be good with
| computers, as they grew up without them (or at least without
| them being as ubiquitous as in the last few decades). It's
| also pretty rare to hit such a sweet spot with an app, which
| makes it somewhat unusual that someone from that age group
| managed to do so.
| vertis wrote:
| I quite like Numi[0] (Mac), also available as part of SetApp[1]
|
| [0]:https://numi.app/
|
| [1]: https://setapp.com/apps/numi
| mfbx9da4 wrote:
| This epitomizes my passion for coding -- it's the lowest barrier
| to entry for being an inventor
| aasasd wrote:
| Total Commander and Ghost Commander on Android solve the problem
| of two panels in the portrait orientation by displaying one of
| them and having a button to switch to the other one. However,
| seeing as some of the success of this calculator app is probably
| attributed to the 'memory' function being non-obvious to people,
| I'd guess that a hidden calculator might also put some off.
| angry_octet wrote:
| New calculator feature request: export the calculation stream to
| the clipboard and CSV/excel, same as old paper tape calculators.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Really cool project for a retired engineer to do.
|
| Kind of reminds me of the "Notebooks" concept that Jupyter and
| others use (I dipped my toes in it, not an expert).
|
| Would be nice if he could abstract the calculators to a
| list/hierarchy of calculations performed, then be able to "open"
| limitless additional calculators as desired and swipe between
| 'em.
|
| Being able to see a hierarchy of calculations and say, go back to
| a parent one and modify the value or part of the calculation
| itself and have child ones update would be super cool.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| it's also less keystrokes relative to M/MR/MC technique when
| chaining computation, since, you have two calculators enable
| concurrency.
| gfodor wrote:
| If you liked this app, stay tuned - I am working on a
| 3-calculator app that increases the utility of this app by up to
| 50%.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| but does it run on the GPU?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The calculations are the output of an ML solver trained on a
| data set generated by corporate accountants.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| It's not the result you want but it's the value we think
| you want.
| misterprime wrote:
| LOL, can you make it dynamically have as many calculators as
| there are cores on the CPU and guarantee that each calculator
| only uses a single unique core for its own calculations?
| meesles wrote:
| I don't think you need to limit the number of calculators to
| the number of cores. You can just store the history/results
| somewhere on disk or in memory. Which core doing the work
| when you press '=' doesn't really matter in this case unless
| you're load-testing this calculator.
| megablast wrote:
| I mean, why?? Do you think the calculator is a heavy CPU
| view???
|
| You still only use one at a time anyway.
|
| And yes, you could easily have 10,000 calculators or more.
| misterprime wrote:
| Thanks, sorry. It was just a silly response to a silly
| comment.
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