this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
1412 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

11130 readers
4065 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
1412
Calculatable (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] red_pigeon@lemm.ee 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Curious to know why ? Basic functionality seems very obvious and friendly to me.

If there is any nuance beyond a 4-function calculator with a single clear button, any nuance or deviation from any kind of standard will not be clearly explained.

There's never a backspace key, only two "clear" buttons that have nuance between them and little to no description as to which does what.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn't useful if you're doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don't. There's a "C/CE" but there isn't a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there's no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you're using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It's pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you're out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it's a UI issue that you can't just say "hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it".

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

basically: calculators should be like old digital typewriters, ideally with an easy to use scripting language built in.