
Ask HN: Programmable Calculator Recommendations? - vector_spaces
I&#x27;m a software engineer with a math background who has to pick up more stats for work. I have solid R and Python skills, but I prefer learning more abstract material with a physical book and my trusty legal pad. Sometimes pulling out a laptop and firing up an RStudio session feels too high friction, and doesn&#x27;t let me travel as light as I would like.<p>So I was looking for something comparable to the TI-84 in functionality and size. Any thoughts or recommendations here would be appreciated
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7thaccount
Great question. Personally, I would check out the J environment. It is a
descendent of APL, but uses standard ASCII characters. It is an array oriented
programming environment, so it is built for math and is really fast for an
interpreter. Programs are very terse and succinct and measured in characters
instead of lines of code. It would be very ideally suited as a kind of very
advanced calculator.

J comes with a very lightweight IDE and you can download all kinds of
libraries and do things like plotting.

If you are ok with RPN (reverse polish notation), I'd check out some Forth
languages which make heavy use of the stack. There is a really cheap (but
nice) commercial forth (forth is kind of like a family of languages which
share a core ideal rather than one language) called 8th ([https://8th-
dev.com/](https://8th-dev.com/)) that has a free version as well. It is
literally a small download with a bunch of C executables. You can run fully
interactive (just like a calculator), run as a script that calls out to the
interpreter, or compile your program to an executable. You can cross-compile
to Windows, Linux, OSx, Android, IOS.. etc and depending on your version has
libraries for ODBC, SQLite, GUI, encrypted binaries, automotive grade
Linux...etc. The creator is super responsive on his forum too.

Of these two, J probably makes a little more sense as a calculator and the
plotting is nice, but array programming takes awhile to click. 8th is much
lighter weight, very easy to deploy, easy to learn (although forth does take
some work), and better documented in my opinion.

I'd also give Julia a try, but it might not be as lightweight as you want.

Another option is to just use a physical calculator if you'd like or Excel?

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eigenspace
The OP is asking about devices, not software environments on traditional
computers.

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7thaccount
Are they? Must've missed it.

The Voyage-200 is an awesome calculator you might be able to find online
still.

SwissMicros reproduce many of the older HP calculators, but smaller and
faster. They're supposed to be pretty good. I use an HP-15c myself.

~~~
eigenspace
They said

> Sometimes pulling out a laptop and firing up an RStudio session feels too
> high friction, and doesn't let me travel as light as I would like.

~~~
7thaccount
I read that as RStudio is too heavyweight, so lighter tools would be
preferred. J is a lot lighter in some ways and is an excellent calculator. You
probably read it correctly though.

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vector_spaces
Yes, I did mean a physical calculator, but I appreciate your comment
nonetheless -- it's all good to know :)

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nightchalk16
Swissmicros dm42?
[https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php](https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php)

