Re: Why do so many people love Teas Instruments?

On Aug 23, 12:47 am, "John H Meyers" <jhmey...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But even I hate RPN notation when it is used in programming. How
would you explain, that almost every modern programming language
is using algebraic notation for mathematical calculations ?

There goes that "hypnotic suggestion" again, causing forgetting
that algebraic formulas can be used freely, anywhere within programs;
it's often just some lack of imagination or creativity that we don't
see more examples (which could have been included in manuals, to give
a little more inspiration to the overall power of multi-lingual internals).

I'm rather referring to manipulation on the stack. I tend to write my
programs skipping local variables, but just manipulating the stack,
since these are generally simple to write, efficient in size and fast.
For short programs it is not that difficult. But trying to decipher a
month later is a challenge RPN on stack manipulation is truly cryptic
to read.

Algebraic notation alone does not encompass all procedural things, however,
so there is always another procedural language for programming
(does TI still use some kind of BASIC? Do you hate as much to see that used?)

TI does uses BASIC. It is easy to write and read. For sure it is
significantly easier to read than USER RPL. My biggest concern is that
it is awfully slow. In fact there is no reason why it must be so slow
on MC68000. TI did a very poor job writing this intepreter.

I have a hard time when deciphering RPN code even written by myself
when it is more than couple of weeks old.

Add a comment :)

The point is, that the more self describing language it is, the less
comments are needed to deciher it and it is easier to debug or modify
it later.

No, it's how "cutsie" designers messed up simple,
predictable, logical things, sometimes to "save a keystroke"
(at the cost of subsequent confusion and errors).
...
...

What you described is some "improvements" to the algebra, that
manufacturers selected to add. Interestingly I've never thought about
precedence of %operator, since in math the % is not really an
algebraic operator that is recognized world wide. You have a point,
that with the addition of operators that are not strictly mathematical
different calculators will produce different results depending on how
the manufacturer interpreted precedence of this artificial operator. I
was more thinking about example such as:

2+3*4=

In this case it should always produce 14. On some older calculators
that was not the case but I don't consider them neither algebraic nr
RPN. Any modern algebraic calculator should intepret this statement
correctly.

I even tried to convince my daughter to use Linux.
She lived with Linux for a few weeks, then asked me to
take this "crap" out of her computer and install Windows.
In my experience this is a typical reaction
of the majority of casual computer users to Linux.

"Casual" users -- says it all.

Casual generally outnumbers "professional" in every field. That is why
casual user drives what is mass market and professional drives niche
market.

If all they did was browse web sites, watch videos on-line,
and chat, how could they tell the difference?

Difference is in being common with peers etc. If every one else is
using for example MS Office why bother with being incompatible. Even
messaging is an issue. Lots of young people use AOL messenger (or
whatever it is called). They don't care that Linux has one that is
able to communicate with AOL. The point is that it is different than
the one their peers are using. In case of my daughter the last straw
was actually that she needed to install something later that was not
in the initial Linux package and she wanted to do it herself. You can
do it without any help on Windows in 99% of cases using simple GUI
installer. When you try to do it on Linux, you end up searching
internet for help. The first thing you discover is, that the help
provided is horrible. In many cases you have so called "gurus" and
"experts" who can't lower themselves to the level of knowledge of the
newbie and their answers are as helpfull as describing 8 years old
tunneling effect using Schrodinger equation. But this is not the
worst. The worst is that in order to install something in most cases
you to discover that you have to download number of cryptic packages
and install them using strange crypting commands from console. Thank
you very much. You have just lost another client. I can add from
myself, that equally irritating is trying to make some hardware set up
and work under Linux. Why is it that in order to set up WiFi or
printer or change settings in most cases you have to memorize and
execute cryptinc commands from console. I think this is the biggest
problem associated with Linux crowd. They are very poor in
uderstanding customer. Microsoft is light years ahead of Linux in
uderstanding their average mass market customer. The problem with
Linux is, that if you don't get that, you can only dream of beating
Windows.

Of course, one good Windows virus or adware infection
could change one's opinion,

I had Windows since 3.1 version and I'm still waiting for this virus
that will infect my machine :-)

as could battling the plagues that beset each new version;
trying alternative browsers, media players, mail clients, etc.
(even Notepad replacements) could open one's eyes a bit more,
to the fact that others are often far better than MS at what it does itself,
and you can often get most of that better stuff for free.

Sure, you can improve on some simple MS tools. These were not meant to
be "top of the line" products. Try to improve on MS professional tools
such as Visual Studio or Office. I don't think there is anything as
good as those products today on the market. Linux GUI RAD is a joke.
Open Office is a nice toy for simple tasks but falls well short when
some more features such as programming are needed. I find people
blindly bashing Microsoft because it is so popular but often it is
them whe spread FUD not the M$ :-)

JAM

.

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