21 Mar
2020
21 Mar
'20
1:31 a.m.
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> writes:
In my case, I was probably a tad more careful because
I was being
forced to thinking in terms of precedence - but I was thinking about
the equation. Whereas with the TI I was just hitting the button per
the equation on the paper. I typed a tad faster on the TI than the HP
because I was not thinking as much but ... I probably made more typing
errors there because I thought less about what I was doing.
That sounds like a good summary. I started out on TI programmable
calculators (my first was a TI-57 that I still have, and that still
works), but moved on to RPN with an HP41CV. Today, I find entering
calculations into an RPN calculator simpler, because I naturally think
in terms of the stack. With a traditional calculator, I have to look at
the (possibly just mentally imaged) formula that I need to evaluate, and
type it in character by character, whereas the RPN calculator lets me
think about the calculation to be performed, and just enter that.
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay