[HN Gopher] Show HN: I Got Tired of Calculator Sites, So I Built...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I Got Tired of Calculator Sites, So I Built My Own
I've always found that online calculators tend to have bad UIs,
especially on mobile. Most of the calculator websites I've come
across use outdated and inconvenient ways of inputting data, or
they format the results in confusing ways. I've noticed that
fraction calculators (especially mixed fractions) are terrible to
use, even on desktop. I haven't built one of those yet, but it's
something I'm planning to tackle soon. This is a project I've
always wanted to work on, but I'm relatively new to this space. So
far, I've created a collection of simple calculators focused on
math and finance. I'd really appreciate any feedback on the UI/UX
or anything else you think could be improved. You can try it here:
https://CalculateHow.com
Author : calculatehow
Score : 26 points
Date : 2025-07-07 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
| FerkiHN wrote:
| Very great calculator, good design, but it has too many
| functions. I advise you to add a "search" to find points, I also
| personally like the intuitive interfaces that are easy to
| understand even for beginners newbie.
|
| Therefore, it may be necessary to add documentation.
|
| In conclusion, the project is not bad, but I wanted the interface
| to be more user-friendly for beginners.
| calculatehow wrote:
| Thanks so much for the feedback! I'll definitely add a search
| bar in the future. I think the best UI's don't need
| documentation. Not saying mine is the best, but if you feel
| like I need documentation then I'm doing something wrong.
| FerkiHN wrote:
| Yes bro, maybe I just misunderstood the interface a little,
| it's still great, but I wanted a simpler interface, it will
| attract more community to the site because it will be easier
| for people to understand what and how.
|
| I hope your project turns out great and the community loves
| it.
| stahn1995 wrote:
| Looks good. It's like a swiss knife. I love it.
|
| As FerkiHN says, a search function sounds really powerful. I find
| timezone converter is really helpful. I work with 5 different
| timezones, and ask "when is 9AM <some timezone> in my timezone?"
| a lot. That would be a good idea for your next time calc.
|
| Please checkout my work as well!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44492131
| FerkiHN wrote:
| Wow bro, this is just great, your project really deserves a
| star and I gave it, I also really liked that the utility is
| available locally.
|
| By the way, I'm also a programmer and I create interesting
| things (my project is not ready yet) but I wanted to tell you
| about my PIT project.
|
| This is a project for viewing photos directly in the terminal,
| it's very cool (I repeat, it's not ready yet), but could you
| please take a look at my repository, and if you want to award
| it a star just for assistance.
|
| https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/phono-in-terminal-image...
| stahn1995 wrote:
| Just starred. Amazing work! As a side note, I think as a
| user, I'd love to see what would be the example of image
| view. The cli command definition looks good tho.
| FerkiHN wrote:
| Bro, I've almost finished developing it, literally, because
| in 1 day I'll post the utility and show demo examples.
| Believe me, it's really worth a star, I'm shocked at what
| happened.
| forty wrote:
| On Firefox for Android on my phone, with the native keyboard the
| button to hide the keyboard is usually replacing the back button.
| With your own keyboard, the button to hide the keyboard is on the
| top right, but my muscles memory goes to hit the back button
| (which brings me back to the previous page rather than hiding the
| keyboard).
|
| I'm not sure if that would be worth it to add an history element
| so that the back button can hide the keyboard, but for me that
| would make things more natural.
| calculatehow wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I wanted to create a custom
| keyboard because I felt that the native keyboards were missing
| some buttons that were useful like the +/- button. I don't want
| to take away from the native experience so thanks for letting
| me know.
| pineaux wrote:
| The UI is still wrong.
|
| The perfect calculator is an LLM that calculates it for you.
|
| /Jk (but really tho, like a nice Wolfram alpha)
|
| No but I want to see a normal calculator immediately. Maybe some
| tabs that allow me to change functions.
| calculatehow wrote:
| Thanks! Can you elaborate more? Like a calculator that just has
| +, -, /, and x? What would the functions be?
| flysand7 wrote:
| The biggest thing I'd want from a calculator -- having to
| calculate numeric expressions involving units, and getting the
| result in a specific unit. This is something I've used the google
| search prompt for because it can do these things to some degree,
| but google isn't a calculator and it will refuse to give you an
| answer right away if it doesn't think you entered a valid numeric
| expression.
|
| Most of the time I'm looking for an answer in questions like:
| 4 weeks + 59*3 hours in days 1/2 * 36g * (900 m/s)^2 in
| joules
|
| Other times when I'm working with memory and want to get a
| specific finite representation in hexadecimal:
| 1 megabyte as hex
|
| This might be off-topic because you're building a suite of
| calculators that I'd have to switch between to perform these
| tasks, rather than a single calculator that can do all / most of
| these things, but this kinda raises a point - if you want to
| switch between the calculators, maybe the UI should allow going
| from one to the other without performing the navigation, I'm
| thinking something like a sidebar that you can click on to switch
| to a different calculator.
|
| Ideally when you switch and switch back the state should be saved
| because you might need to copy multiple values between
| calculators. EDIT: I forgot browsers have tabs, but still.
|
| But really for me personally, nothing would beat a single thing
| that can do units and bases
| Ao7bei3s wrote:
| Try https://numbat.dev/ (https://github.com/sharkdp/numbat).
| It's my go-to for any engineering calculations. It can also run
| locally. >>> 4 weeks + 59*3 hours -> days
| 4 week + 59 x 3 hour day = 35.375 day [Time]
| >>> 5V / 50ohm -> mA 5 volt / 50 ohm milliampere
| = 100 mA [Current]
|
| Full syntax: https://numbat.dev/doc/example-numbat_syntax.html
| paradox460 wrote:
| I like numbat, but wish it supported rpn
| ttshaw1 wrote:
| Try qalculate. It's great with units and I think will work for
| base conversions, though I haven't tried that
| exmadscientist wrote:
| The old TI-89 handheld calculators are amazingly good at this
| stuff. (It does struggle with "bytes", though it handles hex
| quite nicely within its syntax.) I still have one on my desk,
| and this is the main reason why. I barely bother with it for
| anything that doesn't involve units, and it's still worth the
| literal desk space. There is a good Android emulator, though in
| recent years it seems to have grown the habit of sometimes
| registering taps as a large number of button presses. I'm not
| entirely sure why; this behavior is very annoying. It might be
| phone-dependent, or a problem caused by a too-new Android
| version.
|
| Frink is also very good at units, but I struggle to use it for
| anything more complex than a simple conversion. I'm sure it can
| _do_ the task, but I 've never been able to learn to drive it
| well, and usually get pretty frustrated when I try. The
| documentation and my brain don't really get along, or maybe
| it's that I am often in a hurry when I am trying to do
| something with it.
| calculatehow wrote:
| No you raise a great point. It's something I'm trying to solve.
| In the past, I've also had annoying issues where calculators
| didn't allow for multiple input types or wanted the input in a
| weird format. Good to know that more people have this problem.
| Thanks for sharing!
| paradox460 wrote:
| This is one of my favorite features of my old HP-50. You can
| attach units to numbers, and even define conversions between
| units.
| t_mann wrote:
| What is it about traditional calculator UIs that you don't like
| on mobile? I think they work great, unsurprisingly, since the
| form factor is similar. I have several (paid) mobile apps that
| fully emulate a traditional calculator model and I regularly use
| them.
|
| To give some positive feedback: I like your loan calculator.
| That's something that could really be useful for a lot of people.
| I think there's still more you can do there, eg let people figure
| out how much credit they can afford with a given monthly payment.
| Take a look at traditional financial calculators like the HP 12c,
| they're extremely versatile in that regard.
|
| Personally, I don't see the need for separate calculators for
| things like percentage increase or rounding numbers. Most of
| those could be combined in 2-3 apps at most, imho, scientific,
| financial and unit conversion. The others are really separate
| apps that would need a lot more functionality than the pure
| calculation aspect to really be useful (eg time tracking).
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This is a good project with a nice clean UI and of course the
| nice lack of ads that calculator sites love to paint everywhere.
|
| That being said, I do a lot of maths at my day job (and side job)
| and have found that now that I can ask my phone (gemini) math
| problems directly in an unsimplified form, its totally made
| online calculators irrelevant.
|
| "Hey google, calculate the power loss of a 20 ohm resistor if it
| is R1 of an RC circuit with a 1u cap, an input frequency of
| 25kHz, and a rms voltage of 1.2V. Then make me an applet that
| shows the power loss with a slider for the input voltage from 1V
| to 12V, and a frequency slider for 25kHz to 250kHz."
|
| I really cannot emphasize how helpful this is, and basically
| removed the need to seek out online calculators for common
| electronics calculations (which can now be folded into single
| custom calculations), which replaced the need to manually write
| out and solve the equations.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't like that the loan calculator caps out at 50%, because
| the people most likely to want and need a simplified web
| interface are the ones most at risk of taking out batshit crazy
| loans (e.g. https://www.bigpictureloans.com/loan-rates).
|
| For instance, check out this amortization table for one of those
| predatory lenders: https://www.calculator.net/amortization-
| calculator.html?cloa...
|
| I'm capable of finding a working amortization calculator or
| banging it out on my HP-42s. You're capable of doing the math.
| The kind of people who can't do the math themselves are the ones
| who most need to see those numbers in front of their own eyes.
| darmon333 wrote:
| You should check out this calculator here:
|
| https://www.calculator.net/time-calculator.html
| Splizard wrote:
| Can you add support for duplex numbers? (duplexnumbers.com)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-07 23:01 UTC)