I like to have a calculator on my desk as a kind of ‘burst capacity’ for when I’m busy keeping an important mental process running. It’s like having a dedicated chip (with its own private chunk of RAM) optimised for simple arithmetic operations, when such a need arises mid-flow, always available to use without pausing to reallocate any memory elsewhere when everything is running at capacity trying to make some complex decision. And by ‘memory’ here, I mean the combined scratchpad made up of my brain’s thought loop and the windows arranged on my desktop. If I’m at capacity, just changing the focus of windows on the desktop (eg. to bring up a software calculator overlay) can break my train of thought, meaning the spinning plates start to wobble and fall down, and then I have to start over on the wider task, all because I got stuck on something silly like 14*2.5. With a pocket calculator on my desk, I can safely turn my head to it for a moment, do the sum with almost zero effort, and turn back to the monitor, and the plates are all still spinning.
I do the same. Metal context switches on getting the computer to a "calculation" state can be more mentally taxing for me than just picking up the calculator and hitting "on" and doing the calculation.
Also, sometimes I'm working through information/process flows when I need to do my calculations and often times I'll be at the whiteboard instead of at the computer. A handheld calculator comes in handy then too.
I'm usually just doing simple accounting calculations, so no need for any fancy calculator... I use a cheap (and excellent) Casio fx-300es. I have used large format accounting calculators, too; the big buttons on those can sometimes be nice because I can be fast in my typing. But sometimes I do things that are a bit more than just simple accounting so the fx-300es hits the sweet spot for me.
I will use calculator apps (Qalculate! mostly) if I'm getting my source values from the computer screen. In that case it's easier to compare what I'm typing in the calculator app with the on-screen source at a glance... so that's one scenario where the balance shifts and favors the app.
I can relate to this. I have totally lost track of what I was about to do during the process of opening an application countless times. I shudder to think of the many lost ideas and sparks of genius.
Yes, I have a desktop calculator primarily because I like using RPN, and there are very few software RPN calculators _that aren't just HP emulators._ In a pinch I will use PCalc in RPN mode on iPadOS, and Droid48 on Android, but those just can't beat the tactile sensation of real buttons.
I bought a SwissMicros DM42: the build quality is great, the e-ink display works really nice for a calculator, and it sips power compared to more recent graphing calculators. (I've had this thing for over a year and it's still showing a full charge on the CR2032 battery it shipped with. My HP 50g used to demolish a set of like 3 or 4x AAA batteries every 2-3 months.) My only complaint is the rubber feet have exposed my office desk as not being a truly flat surface.[1] (I also have access to an HP-15C (both the original and a clone), but I like being able to see the whole stack in XYZT mode. I have no mind's eye, so seeing only the one register is torture for me.)
You stored 3.14159 in register i and removed it from the top of the main stack. Then you tried to print the top of the empty stack with n and pop it. That's why you got the stack empty error.
The only real way to understand it is to read the man page. That said, once you get the hang of it, you can sum all numbers on the stack with the following program
[ + z 1 <s ] ss ls x p
The [ and ] delimit the macro definition that's placed on top of the stack. ss stores the just defined macro in register s and removes it from the top of the main stack. ls loads the macro from register s and places it on the top of the main stack. x executes the macro and p prints the final result.
As for the macro, + pops the top two elements on the stack, adds them and places the result on the top of the stack. z pushes the stack size on top of the stack. 1 pushes 1 on top of the stack. <s pops the top two elemenets on the stack, compares them, and if the top element is less than the the second element, it executes the macro stored in register s. Otherwise, it doesn't do anything.
The macro will execute as long as the stack size is greater than 1. Once the stack size is 1, it will terminate and the p command prints the sum of all the numbers on the stack.
same same. but i have parked the DM42 and stick to my 50g and 11c. i also have the hp that has hex and binary mode but it’s more of a novelty than my daily driver.
thank you, that is the one! unlike the others, i never owned it originally. i bought it maybe 6 or 8 years ago on ebay. back in the age of apple ][, DOS and the like, i can imagine how it might have been quite a useful tool calculator.
oh, i also have a machinists calculator. it can do specific calcs like speeds and feeds, bolt pattern spacing, inch/metric conversion, etc. i rarely use that one too, but it's nice. i love how it has "adj", "opp", "hyp" markings for trig functions.
An RPN calculator is a must for almost everything I do, from real engineering, to startup finances and expenses, to making/3D printing, to home/landscape improvement. I keep a real HP emulator* pinned to the taskbar at all times, ready to be launched and used with just a touch (and yes the touchscreen works great with the emulators, if you upsize them a bit. Plus, an actual HP-41cv on my physical desktop, for the heavy lifting not easily handled by the emulators.
(Anything that can't be done on the HPs is going to need some code written, anyway...)
*Three, actually - an HP-15C Scientific pinned to the taskbar, and the default install links to the HP-12C Financial, and HP-16C Hex/Binary emulators in the apps menu. All are official exact HP emulations for Windows published by HP France some time ago. Alas, the link I had is dead, so I'm not sure where you can get them anymore...
Oh, and CreativeCreek's excellent MathU RPN on the iPhone, which feels insanely HP-like as it mashes together the functionality of several HP calculators in a very useful way. (It does the work of the 12C, 15C, and 16C quite well - at least all of what I use on each!)
MathU remains one of only three apps I've ever paid for. It is actually the last major thing keeping me from leaving the Apple ecosystem, since there's no Android version. Yes, it's that good.
You can also get official HP emulators for the iPhone. They were unmaintained for years but now they've been handed over to a new company who is updating them again.
On the terminal, I use `qalc`[1]. It's a nice natural language calculator that does arithmetic, solves quadratic equations/linear systems, does unit conversions and even a bit of calculus. Combine it with a cli graphing tool and you can do pretty cool things.
Anything more complicated I'm probably ok with latency, so I open up wolframalpha and enter it there, again, in natural language.
--When I open the link of the parent, I see a graphical calculator, qalculate, but the description hints at something else, more of a text input calculator. The web app linked from qalculate looks like it. Is that available somewhere?--
Never mind.
I installed it, and it is two applications, one text input, one graphical, ... which also has text input, but responds differently from the examples. E.g. sqrt(72) doesn't mention it's 6√2. Confusing, but I'll find out, I guess.
Casio fx-991ES - for the sole reason I was an engineering student a couple of lives ago.
About two years ago I started doing projects in real-space, as opposed to software-space, and would you believe it - I do sometimes need some trigonometry! But in most cases it's easier to add a bunch of measurements on a device I can literally put on the thing I'm working on and focus on measuring (and not the simple arithmetic). And then getting the center points/lines is three button presses.
Also, this device has stats mode with table input and I do use it too! Getting basic mean and std. dev. when checking CO2 levels in the greenhouse etc.
But! I also bought RealCalc (or whatever's the name...) for Android to have... a spare proper calculator, really. I still prefer a dedicated physical device.
Physical one, no. Apps, all the time for any napkin math. Unfortunately most calculator apps are no match for dedicated calculators - they can't be trusted and most devs don't give a shit to the balance between mental load and quick input. Most apps don't even have ultra basic stuff like binary operator repeat, making it pointless to use.
I consider RPN obsolete - yes it's faster for longer calculations but the input clarity is also lost compared to algebraic, and if I need longer calculations I'll just take a proper CAS or scripting language instead of mental juggling.
On Android, I've found HiPER Calc and Segitiga.Pro to be the only non-emulated calculators worth using. Both apps are clearly made by enthusiasts with attention to detail and correctness. On Windows/Linux/MacOS, I haven't found a single app worth using.
Calculators have a razor thin niche, and most "advanced" calculator apps like SpeedCrunch fail to stay in it, due to the feature creep or otherwise. Most often they are trying to reinvent a REPL instead of using proper algebraic calculator input, and overload it with functions that belong in more serious software. All that lowers the input and iteration speed, and makes the calculator too clunky to use for napkin math and/or bloated and slow to start (Qalculate). At this point you can take any scripting/functional REPL instead of this app.
My primary use case is augmenting my napkin math. That doesn't necessarily mean doing all calculations on the calculator, just offloading the parts where my intuition is likely to fail, to help narrow down the result.
For anything where precision and correctness matters (long formulae, sums of values) I'm usually using more specialized tools, from math software to spreadsheets. They could be tested and verified, unlike calculators. And that's exactly what I don't want to see in a calculator I use, because it turns it into something more heavyweight. Calculator is a bicycle for me, not an earth moving machine.
Yes. There are some things that just work better with a dedicated tool. Sure, my computer has a calculator app, but it's fiddly, the keyboard doesn't physically have buttons for all the operations, so I have to go and click on things. If I need to compute something and copy data to/from other windows, I have to deal with moving windows around to make room.
I do use the calculator on my computer. Quite a lot, in fact. But it's just annoying enough that I keep a pocket calculator on my desk at all times.
It's really great for when I'm doing calculations in my head and need to quickly do some operations. It's just ever so slightly easier to slide over my physical calculator and punch some buttons. It helps me stay in flow and keep all the numbers in my head. The calculator app is just a little bit too annoying and the physical calculator is just a little bit more functional.
As for model, no idea. Some Casio scientific calculator. I bought it because it advertised it could operate with hex or binary representation, but I never figured out how to make that work.
I would prefer a TI-84 or one of its decendants any day. I used to use a TI Nspire, it was really good. It even did 3D graphing and calculus.
Nice TI-30X solar calculator in the detached garage. End up using it pretty much every time I'm out there. It's cheap and tough, with a hard shell cover to keep the 50 different kinds of liquids off the keys.
TI-82 at my desk, which I never use because I have multiple other ways to calculate stuff at my desk.
Sharp EL-506D I've had since probably before 1990 in a bed stand with the manual. Small and elegant device. The small calculators around today are all limited adding/multiply/divide, whereas the Sharp is a "scientific" calculator.
The thing I do most basic calculation with, however, is SpeQ Mathematics 3.4, which was developed by Jos de Jong and hasn't been updated since 2010. That is a truly beautiful bit of code.
Sharp EL-506D I've had since probably before 1990 in a bed stand with the manual. Small and elegant device.
Nice to see another EL-506 user here. I've had mine since around my freshman year of high school, so 1987 or so. It still works, although it has some issues. I think one of the screws that holds the back cover on is missing, and the LCD has gotten a bit dim. I rarely touch it anymore, but it was a reliable and handy companion for many years.
Similar, I’ve got a TI-30 on my desk and a TI-89 (if I recall correctly) somewhere in a box or drawer.
I got pretty good with the 89 in high school and college, and it served me well on tests. But anything it can do, that the 30 can’t, is better served by a full computer.
I used a HP-35s for a long time in a previous job where I had to do quite a bit of arithmetic. It's the "35th anniversary edition" of the "classic" HP-35 RPN calculator (IIRC the 35s can do infix as well, but I never used it). It's a really nice calculator, but I no longer have it (when I moved to New Zealand I had to get rid of a lot of stuff).
These days, opening a new terminal or whatnot is just as fast, allows copy/paste from my computer, and unlike that job I'm not stuck on a Windows machine so I have some more flexibility.
In zsh I have this:
autoload -U zcalc # Get quick results for "zc 6 * 6", or just use "zc" to get zcalc
alias zc >/dev/null && unalias zc
zc() { if (( $# )); then zcalc -e ${(j: :)argv}; else zcalc; fi }
alias zc='noglob zc'
No RPN though; I still really like RPN, but context switching between infix and RPN is hard.
zcalc is basically just a better version of bc. There are probably even better CLI calculators out there, but zcalc has the same advantage as bc: you'll almost always have it available (if zsh is available anyway, which is always true for my usage).
On the computer, I use Emacs' Calc [0]. Having such a powerful calculator right there and built into my editor is compelling.
On the go, I use Droid48 [1]. As much as I love my real HP-48G, I find that it's similar to the saying about cameras: "the best camera^H^H^H^H^H^Hcalculator is the one that's with you."
I am partial to 48sx in Android, I find Droid48's UI somewhat uglier.
Also, to answer OP's question: I use the HP48 emulator in my phone very frequently. I have a solar folding 4-key Casio on my work desk which I also use since it is less distracting to fold it open and do some quick calculations there instead of opening a Python interpreter or the scientific calculator app on the computer.
I studied industrial and electronics engineering at university so I have used and abused several Casio fx-82, they are ubiquitous in Spain starting from high school. At uni, I bought an used HP 50G which saved my ass in more than one exam, being able to store equations and having only to input the coefficients saved a lot of time and errors. The programming capability and symbolic math were also very handy when dealing with big matrices. I remember turning a long and messy electronics nodes problem that took half an hour or more to solve by hand into a short program that solved it almost instantly for arbitrary matrix sizes. Having to program my own solution also meant learning the procedure in the process, of course! Not cheating!
I have been meaning to build a lithium battery pack for my 50G, it is true that it eats batteries. I used to buy a new pack before exams just in case. I have a bunch of harvested li-ion cells from disposable vapes that would fit the bill perfectly, just add a TP4056 module, a regulator and some CAD work for a printed enclosure. And a bit of free time, of course.
Curiously, here engineering schools are (were?) partial to HP calculators, TI are not as common to see. My boss still has his 48G on his desk and uses it frequently. I guess it becomes second nature when using it so much during formative years, and I definitely did. Being fast and precise on your calc could bump you from almost passing to barely passing.
I realize I pull out my 48g for taxes each year. Your 'second nature' comment hit home. I would struggle a bit with a normal calculator since I had used a 48g through university and beyond. 100% trust my input on the HP.
I use a Casio fx-991ES PLUS every day. Its only obvious advantage over the much more common fx-85GT (?) is that it has hex, binary, and octal conversion modes.
I did buy a TI calculator after hearing Americans rave about them on the Internet, mine is a TI-83 Plus. It was more expensive than the Casio, even secondhand, but it sucks so I don't use it. The Casio is way easier to use, and the Casio gives the answer as a fraction when it is rational, instead of always formatting it with decimal places.
The TI doesn't have mathematical formatting of the input, so you have to remember how your parentheses line up manually. It does have the advantage of having a larger display and showing a short history on it. I just got it out to try and remember what I hated about it, and I can't remember. Maybe it's just the lack of rational output.
I'm curious when you bought that TI calculator and whether you were aware of the whole scene around the TI-83+/TI-84 calculators. When I was in high school, these calculators were the required calculators for certain classes and exams. But a lot of my classmates liked these calculators because of a niche online community that had figured out how to write assembly programs that targeted the Z80 processor in these calculators. And that meant that we could load games like Tetris or Phoenix (a Space Invaders clone).
Yeah, and I learned my first real programming using TI-BASIC on my TI-85 calculator (in the middle of class even) way back in 7th grade. Made choose your own adventure games, action games using text characters on the screen, like there was an Arkanoid-style game I think I copied from somewhere, and then I came up with my own game about moving an ant around a field, hiding in tall grass from spiders, and picking up peas for points.
Later on I made a text driven fighting game that had like 50 fighters from a bunch of different games in it, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, etc. Then near the end I had a multi-class text-driven RPG where you went out fighting in different regions as long as you could manage then returned to an inn to heal, buy equipment, etc.
Most of that was made using two thumbs on a calculator while bored during math classes or any other class I could pretend I needed my calculator for.
Really boosted my understanding of the basics of programming pretty early in life, and gave me an even bigger boost when I took the one programming class in high school, which was focused on QuickBasic.
As for the main topic, I have my old TI-85 still, and I got a TI-NSPIRE as well since, but I am not very good about using it nowadays, unfortunately. I keep meaning to, but I haven't really needed to.
I’ve never tried the built in one, I compile C or C++ to native code. You also have Python available but it’s not that good (e.g. the font size is too big)
I use an HP-35s as a first stop for calculations. I also use Emacs Calc as my PC calculator. However, I still find it difficult to memorise seldom-used commands there, so I use my HP-35s more often.
Two notes: 1) I definitely prefer RPN, 2) the power management of the HP-35s is so bad that I use too many batteries for it. A good reason to overcome the memorisation problem with Emacs Calc.
Nah, I rarely need to do calculations, and if I do I'll use cmd+space on Mac, Spotlight can do simple calculations, or Google.
For longer calculations I used to use Soulver, but I haven't needed to do that in a while. I recall last time I used it, it was for something in eve online. It's a bit more suitable for that kind of calculation because you can write down your thinking and name variables while doing stuff.
That said, I remember once upon a time we had an old desktop calculator, plugged in, chunky buttons, illuminated display (blue segment display), that thing was pretty cool, if I had the desk space I wouldn't mind a somewhat oversized calculator like that.
I still use an HP-12C financial calculator, although somewhat sporadically now. It used to be an extremely useful companion when I worked with loan processing systems some years ago.
> Somehow for me using a calculator like that, rather than having to use screen space, or a phone …. Makes my workflow better.
Indeed. I can't explain why, but I feel the same. I wonder about the possible reasons. The tactile response? The focus (the device has a sole purpose)?
Yes, from time to time. Mostly when doing math "homework". ("homework" as I'm not in a class, but I do a bit of Algebra or Precalc or Calc or whatever every other day or so for a refresher). I have a fairly substantial collection of handheld calculators, from my old Sharp EL506A that I bought in high-school, a couple of Casio models, a couple of HP's, a TI-85, and a few TI-86 / TI-84 / TI-89 ones, to my latest addition, a TI NSpire CAS.
What I reach for most often is a TI-89 Titanium. I'll occasionally also pull out my TI-85 (with the OS/2 sticker on the cover!) just out of nostalgia.
~~
Moving beyond the original question as posed, and just getting into the more general topic of "calculating tools" and what not...
If I'm on my laptop and I need to do some quick calculating, I generally just fire up R, Octave, Maxima, or Python in a terminal session, or use bc, depending on what I need to do. As a convenience, I have a script in ~/bin named "bc" that looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
echo "scale=5;"$1 | /bin/bc -l
So I can easily do calculations like this:
$> bc 3+4
7
If I actually want an interactive bc session, I have an alias defined like
alias bci='/bin/bc -i'
And then I usually have a Wolfram Alpha tab open as well, if I'm doing "math stuff". I actually just broke down and signed up for a paid Alpha subscription. Not something I thought I'd ever do, but it's useful enough that I finally bit the bullet.
On the topic of silly little scripts that help with math stuff, I’ve put in my ~/bin directory a script called ‘doc’ which does
octave —eval “doc $@“
So I can just pop open a new terminal and type something like “doc bicgstab” to go directly to their documentation (I prefer their terminal documentation interface to the gui one, but it is inconvenient to have it take over my in-progress session).
On the topic of bc, I assume it is just a result of it being an old Unix program from the days when an FPU was not assumed, but the need to pass the -l flag to get floats seems kind of silly nowadays.
As of 2017, Casio FX-9860GII. Overkill for actual usage, but cheap -- so why not?
Before that, TI-30XS from 2013 and the TI-36X from 2011. The 36X is still in my laptop bag. Can't remember what I had before 2011 -- some old "programmer's calculator" from the 90s.
My wife (and various colleagues) thinks I'm crazy, but it's actually easier to grab the calculator from the desk and do a quick calculation than to open/use the calculator app.
It’s similar to how it’s easier to pick up a pen and start writing on a pad; then pick up your phone, open the note app and start a new note.
I just want a simple desktop calculator for the office. And that got me interested in the topic. But like you say, I t’s cheap enough to go for the overkill option these days.
Casio fx-991ES iirc - I haven't found it since moving, and that has reaffirmed how useful I find it to have one, I've reached for it numerous times and been annoyed not to have it. (In lieu of it, I used bc for a while, and now python. Still hope it turns up soon though - this submission's probably going to make me have a look for it again...)
I wear a Casio calculator watch as my daily driver because i like the style and actually use the calculator function more often than you'd expect.
I also have and learned to use a nice Japanese desk abacus, because it was fun. And finally I own a giant novelty calculator for those big calculations. Again, I never use them.
In grad school I learned how to use a slide rule mostly to scare undergrads, but once I got used to it I absolutely loved it. I picked up a really cool brass one from a bookstore in Paris a few years later, and ever since then I've used it for any problem with few enough digits.
Yeah if you have numerical methods intuition, 99% of the time you can get away with a guesstimation for practically anything. Most people are doing it wrong when they are trying to use calculators for complex computations directly. With a slide rule it's pretty obvious, as the precision is expensive on it. My grandfather, a mechanical engineer, taught me how to use slide rules and nomograms when I was a kid, but I still use calculators since they need fewer workaround tricks.
I have a handheld calculator but it's in a drawer. An HP 35, the first scientific calculator ever made, the first run. Found it in the Black Hole for $5 years ago.
See my brother had pre-ordered one but it was delayed because the US federal government acquired all the first run, for use at Los Alamos National Labs. That's where the Black Hole was, a surplus store for lab equipment.
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The faceplate has the key symbols silkscreened on it, instead of on the keys. That's how I know it's one of the first run. Kind of historic, if you're into tech history.
HP-35S here, rpn mode. I got into it in my first job back in 2011. All the engineers I was working with used them. We'd standardized on rpn long ago, after one senior engineer attempted to use a colleague's new algebraic calculator under time pressure and threw it against the wall in frustration.
For context my line of work back then was electrical high-power testing for some big customers. Lots of thinking on your feet, hence the need for fewer keystrokes.
He expected the calculator to work like an rpn, but it was infix only, which he'd never used before. I guess the 2 euro per second time pressure must've got to him.
I still often use a TI-89 I bought in 1999. I also bought my daughter a used TI-86 and she uses it daily. Both are way nicer to use than the calculators on our phones.
I agree. I have my TI-89 from college that I use at work. Unfortunately I work in a lab and spilled a solution on it after nearly 2 decades of use and now the + button doesn't respond most of the time. What a drag!
Only recently I bought a TI 84 Python Edition and I love it. Good user interface, good functionality. I prefer to have separate calculators with me when reading and thinking (I also use the Python functionality for little helper scripts, e.g. a simple math trainer for my kids).
On the PC, I have a lot of appreciation for qalculate (sometimes in combination with the generic Cantor interface, a KDE software)
I don't have much need for a calculator what I'm doing currently, but I have the same TI-84 from when I was a teenager, and when I had a desk I kept it on it. I find myself using the phone app calculator for most things "around the house" or for craft projects lately, but I am so irritated by it, it's not as easy to see the history if you made an error, and if you don't hit the enter key you get an answer but it doesn't commit that answer to history, meaning you need to do the whole calculation over again if you forgot to copy your answer or hit enter. And the reason I don't hit enter is because I still want to see my input operation, and hitting enter makes the output a new input more or less. On the TI-84 I can see everything conveniently laid out and more easily chose from my last outputs for new inputs. Never doing anything complicated, mostly just scaling ratios (how much material do I need for x size item), but it's irritating to have to do everything twice on a cell phone.
I use my HP-16C several times every week while debugging Notecard firmware. Yes, math is integrated into IAR EWARM and there's always Hex Calc on my iPhone. But there is something comforting about grabbing this same little artifact that has been on my desk since the days when I was debugging Lotus Notes using symdeb.
It may be highly likely that I'm in some kind of out-of-touch techno bubble, but I don't see that much of a point of real physical hand-held calculators anymore. I feel like they got stuck between a rock and a hard place, i.e.:
1. With everything being so mega-project and planned-ahead nowadays, you rarely need that "oh lemme just calculate it for you right now" on-the-stop calculating. If a piece of work needs that, in my eyes somebody has already failed upstream.
2. For simple calculations, a normal computer will work fine (and you're likely using one anyway in jobs that need calculating).
3. For complex calculations, you will likely be writing a script in some programming language in order for the calculation to be easily repeatable, etc.
I can just imagine there are loads of people in jobs that do need real physical hand-held calculators every day, and are shaking their fist at me right now :P
I assure you there are still lots of projects that are not mega. Are you interpreting the question as only asking about using a calculator for your day job?
Imagine you're measuring something awkward for a home improvement project and you need to add several imperial lengths. That doesn't match any of your three cases.
That one could go either way. Home improvement stuff can be CAD modeled just as much as megaprojects. I tend to go straight to CAD for a lot of things that would otherwise require a paper sketch.
Maybe not the best for brain health, but definitely convenient!
Mostly a joke, but it doesn't Aid you in Designing anything all that much. It's more like a code based simulation of a drafting table, something you use to record the design that's already in your mind. Trial and error and iteratively refining is not really as viable when every step takes pretty significant effort just to figure out how to position something.
Use the Python interactive CLI most of the time. I still have a TI30x around for the few times I don't have my laptop around, like when doing electronics or wood working. I could use my phone for that, but I really prefer using a proper keyboard than a touchscreen for that task.
Yep! Casio FX-82AU Plus that I got in high school. Nice and quick to do quick sums and reasonably capable for more complex calculations. I also have an older Casio graphing calc but having never used one at school I just don’t have the muscle memory for it.
I love the idea of a physical calculator. I mean, they seem really cool if you're a nerd, who wouldn't want an nSpire?
But math is pretty tightly tied to screens for me. I'm usually finding a resistor value I will then enter in a schematic capture app, or looking up the dimensions of something online and making something fit in CAD, or pricing out a project by looking up parts.
90% of the time, if I'm doing math, I'm on a tablet or computer anyway. I'd like a physical calculator for the other 10%, but I think I might never use it, because... It would probably be farther away than my phone and laziness and habit would take over.
I don't, I occasionally use my phone but it usually takes too long to get it out, figure out where the calculator app is, rotate to go to scientific...
Mostly I use bc or python. Julia is potentially a better choice but it's not in my muscle memory.
Yeah brother, me too. An fx-100D to be precise. I had to put new batteries in it ~8 years ago. I love the minimal UI. I use Real Calc on my phone when not near my fx-100D. Each time I'm infuriated by the overhead of: unlock phone, launch app, dismiss the "do you want to upgrade" banner.
Me too :), my one is the "College FX-100". I got it circa 1983 for my last year or so in high school. It's still a daily driver and the batteries last forever.
Graphing calculators are abusively priced and regular calculators lack visual history or GOOD recall. The best "calculator" I own is Excel, then whatever device I happen to be on except the iPad which doesn't have a real one in 2024 because some dead guy said it was a bad idea in 2009.
The Windows 11 calculator is a notable downgrade from its predecessor. Randomly takes forever to load, sometimes even spawning an update window instead, and never spawns on the same monitor as my mouse cursor. All for what? To add a bunch of "converters" that are still worse than Google let alone any LLM.
No, but I never learned to use one well, even through calculus. I've always done my math leaving in the fractions/radicals/irrational numbers, so being confined to decimal output messes with me. I find I'm never sure if it's right. If someone needs a decimal answer from me, I can always just use a software app to convert my final answer to a decimal.
I don't have to do a lot of math in my daily life, but I'm more proficient working with fractions and doing arithmetic in my head than I am doing it on a calculator.
I'm very rarely, I'm mostly using qalc on the commandline, but I do have a TI-30 from between 1976 and 1978 (the LED version) on my desk that I sometimes do basic calculations on.
I've a TI-89 emulator on my phone. Also a nice RPN calculator app (RealCalc) for most simpler calculations (no dimensional analysis needed). And Orpie for a CLi calculator.
Funny, yesterday I got out my TI-89 Titanium to go over some linear algebra, and explore some ideas regarding exterior algebra and deep neural networks.
The big lesson is: my linear algebra is pretty rusty.
Texas Instruments "Programmer II" [0] which dates back to the 1980's (bought new sometime back then). Sits on the desk for the days when I need to convert back and forth between hex and decimal.
Edit: mine predates the one in the link, date code C-0185 meaning January 1985, serial number 47674.
I love the Programmer view in the macOS calculator. Being able to type in hex, flip binary digits. I've needed it a handful of times ever, but it's nice to know it's there.
For a long time I wanted a real one, with a bank of binary LEDs alongside a hex display. Just for fun really. I don't know if such a calculator ever existed? But that one looks like the closest.
I like doing 6502 assembly on my Apple II+ (clone), and just assembled a PX 16C kit, which is a clone of the HP 16C calculator. Really great for hex and binary, and all sorts of bit manipulations. One day I may buy an actual HP 16C, but I couldn't get myself to spend the money on one just yet. I have the PX sitting next to my Apple II and it's great.
I also have an HP-41C, a 48S, and a Sharp PC-1500, because I'm a nerd.
Yes, quite frequently. A cheap[1] Casio fx-85GT Plus - one kicking around my desk, the other in my laptop bag. I'm not doing anything mathematically sophisticated, so usually it does everything I need and is so much easier than switching context to use my phone or an online calculator - and I appreciate the small element of physicality. Battery/solar so it lasts for ever, too.
[1] £10ish from a supermarket. Lost one, bought another, then inevitably found the first one.
I do not make so many calculations nowadays.
When a computer is on, I have a xonsh and all the calculation power of Python.
When not, the simple calculator app that came with the cellphone is most of the time sufficient.
But I think when doing lots of or at least frequently scientific calculations, a good physical calculator has superior characteristics. Typing a 'sin'-Button is way faster than typing 's' 'i' 'n' on a keyboard, e.g.
I've got an HP40gs laying around from my physics days, I should really get some batteries for it. Picked up the cheapest scientific calculator I could for the geology degree, a Sharp EL-501w (The casio fx260 is near and dear to my heart but it doesn't have a second line/history which is very handy) and I still pick that up pretty frequently, my phone has rpncalc, which is great and all but it doesn't come to hand as easily.
While some find it weird, I only use Google (search bar) for all my calculations. I never liked those hand held ones, super slow and error prone I find.
Yes, although not as much. But I still keep my TI Nspire CX CAS charged for when I need it (needed it during my CS studies for adjacent topics). Specifically the CAS version is nice because it can simplify algebra for you, and even solve/rewrite an expression for a specific variable. There’s probably something I can use on my computer, I do like the ergonomics of the calculator though
But last week I decided it's time to revive my old calculator and I ordered spare batteries for it.
The reason was that I was building some cupboards and needed some simple measurements calculated.
Every time I took out my phone to substract or divide a number, some attractive push notification distracted me. Pulling me into some hole of chats, social media, a game, whatever. At least dragging me out of the flow of woodworking.
I have a TI89 emulator on my phone, which I use often. It's a slightly outdated interface in the smartphone era, but for me it's still the most usable for certain things, particularly unit conversions, 2- or 3-variable RREF calculations, and small CAS calculations. I can do all those things in python, with more overhead, iff I'm at a computer.
Until recently I did use the CASIO one where you can put an entire equation in.
Nowadays I've bound SpeedCrunch to one of my unused keys (Pause / Break) so I just tap it once and have a large screen calculator with comfortable keyboard interface and infinite precision.
I'd certainly use the handheld calc in other scenarios though where the computer is not available.
I have a physical HP-15C in my desk and I use the HP-15C emulator on my phone. As you can probably tell, I used that calc in college engineering classes until mine got stolen. I replaced it with an HP-28S that I used for quite a while. I bought the physical 15C a few years ago - 30 years after my original was stolen.
I use a calculator so rarely, I've found I mostly just type the equation into the closest browser address bar to see the result. Works great for most PEMDAS operations. For 90% of the time, I have my answer quicker than I would be able to open another app.
For anything more complex, I usually open a spreadsheet or drop into a python shell.
I use whatever scientific caluclator it was that I bought for highschool back in the 90s
It still works
And does more than I've ever needed it to
Yes, I also use Excel or Numbers or my phone's calculator or the Calculator app on my desktop ... but there are times when it's just way simpler to use a dedicated device
No, it used to be a TI-84 Plus but that has been replaced by a phone app for basic stuff and mathematica, jupyter etc. for more complicated calculations.
Having actual, tactile buttons is nice, but not nice enough to compensate for the bad display, complicated menus and fiddly input for longer calculations.
Nope. I have a Mac with a calculator app and I have an extended keyboard with a numpad. If I'm doing anything more advanced I usually pull up a spreadsheet. For what its worth, I really don't do anything scientific, mostly statistics on performance, ratios of things, etc.
I own one, but almost never use it. For quick, few-steps calculations I’ll use the iPhone’s calculator app. When I have more complex calculations, I almost always find myself needing to remember and label different values, so I’ll just type “python3” in the terminal and get to work ;)
Not anymore. Using the Windows Calculator for normal stuff and Casio keisan (https://keisan.casio.com/calculator) if I need high precision, which happens but not very often.
Another vote for my Casio FX82. Ease and speed of use are why I prefer it to any calc apps.
Though I'll admit that I have a bias towards physical, single purpose devices. I use a physical (digital) timer in the kitchen, and a physical mechanical metronome when playing music.
Yes, I use mine HP Prime daily, not only the physical one, but also the emulator on Windows and Android. Mainly for quick and dirty math when developing new research ideas, too heavy for just typing in PowerShell, but not enough for me to bother launching Matlab.
I use PowerShell for simple arithmetic. I can process CSVs, JSON, and XML. It can save temporaries to variables, and has basic sort and filter capabilities.
For anything past the most basic arithmetic, I use Mathematica, which feels like using a 500 ton press to crack a walnut.
All virtual calculator (phone app) 's UX suck balls so I end up bought the most advanced physical one.
It can do spreadsheets, solving linear equations, 4x4 matrix, unit convertion, stats, integrals, derivatives, etc. Absurdly powerful for a physical calculator.
Yes. But I’m afraid my nerd cred will suffer… I have a CVS (as in the drugstore) scientific calculator on my desk. I think I paid $6 for it when I had to take a test 15 or so years ago.
Like a book, sometimes I find it less distracting to use a more simple device.
The only time I had one on my desk on a regular basis (outside of school / university work) is when I was coding in assembly. Converting between various numeric bases was what I used it most, and it beat using a calculator program.
From the places I've worked at it seems to be profession based. IT for example is a no, but someone in finance or a person in upper management who works with a lot of figures seem to still find them useful.
Depends. For simple math I just have a SpeedCrunch window open somewhere, but for more complex equations or if I need to graph something (which is rare for me nowadays) my school Numworks is still on my desk
RealCalc on Android, specifically because it's a close match to the calculators I'm used to from school and that frustratingly I can't find after this many years.
Yes, a Swiss Micros DM42.
Why? Mostly because I like it, but I justified it to myself by using it in the lab, where having a more expensive screen is not wise.
I use an old HP48sx. I used to teach a class on how to use it, to engineering students, as a side gig. As a result, I think in RPN easier than algebraic calculator mode.
I love the form factor of the TI Voyage 200. One still sits on my desk at work. It gets used for small problems, usually via the home screen or its little spreadsheet.
Despite having a single dedicated key on my keyboard that opens speedcrunch, I will always reach for my trusty Casio calculator that I bought 20 years ago in school.
I'd like a recommendation for a programmers calculator, specifically one which can do a full 64 bit binary or hex calculation without truncating the result.
Absolutely! Depending what I’m doing an HP-12C (financial stuff) or a Casio fx-82 solar II (most other stuff). I have one of each at home and in the office.
yeah, I keep and use a TI-85 and an HP financial calculator. I was trained in the use of both (one in college and the other a job) so it is easier for me to just grab one of those than look up the calculator app.
