21 Mar
2020
21 Mar
'20
2:10 a.m.
I also love RPN, dc, & the HP calculators. I wrote an RPN calculator in
Python recently (I call it via a shell alias called pc). It imports much of
the math, operator, and builtins modules, so you can use it just like dc,
but with much more stuff available:
$ pc 200 pi \* log10 sqrt
1.6727760963016285
You can push arbitrary Python objects and functions onto the stack. Install
with pip install rpnpy Source at https://github.com/terrycojones/rpnpy
Terry
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 8:48 PM Grant Taylor via COFF <coff(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
On 3/20/20 1:43 PM, Grant Taylor via COFF wrote:
What I think I'm hearing you say is that
with RPN you were shouldering
part of the computational load based on how you were entering things so
that they aligned as necessary with the stack. Conversely, you were
simply "plug and chug" (as I've heard elsewhere). Meaning you entered
the equation / formula and were largely hands off from the calculation.
I can see how this could be translated to RPN could cause someone to
feel like they have a better understanding of what's being calculated.
Conversely, infix notation leaving someone feeling separated from the
calculation and having much less of an understanding of what's being
calculated.
This separation making it more likely that people will have problems
estimating and having any idea if what they're doing makes any sense or
not.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
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