Plus42 Pricing and documentation

[Marco Polo]

(11-27-2023 10:20 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(11-27-2023 08:32 PM)Marco Polo Wrote:  I generally prefer RPL, but Plus42 is an excellent calculator and, most important, is very well mantained.
I am playing with it since beta testing and, even if it is not yet capable to replace my 48/50g (and I am not sure it will ever be)

Side question: How does someone learn RPL in 2023? My last full-time calculator was the HP-42S around 1996. I left the calculator world behind until about 6 months ago. I keep reading about how great RPL is, but as far as I can tell, no HP calculator currently in production uses RPL. The HP Prime seems to have its own language. The 50G gets great reviews, but is no longer in production, and seems fairly rare and expensive on eBay, in the $120 to $175 range.

Short answer: i am using RPL calculators since 1989.
The learning curve was steep, but after one week i could use my 28s in most of its power.
On the converse, i struggle a little when switching to RPN (35s, Plus42)

[bxparks]

(11-28-2023 06:13 AM)Marco Polo Wrote:  

(11-27-2023 10:20 PM)bxparks Wrote:  Side question: How does someone learn RPL in 2023? My last full-time calculator was the HP-42S around 1996. I left the calculator world behind until about 6 months ago. I keep reading about how great RPL is, but as far as I can tell, no HP calculator currently in production uses RPL. The HP Prime seems to have its own language. The 50G gets great reviews, but is no longer in production, and seems fairly rare and expensive on eBay, in the $120 to $175 range.

Short answer: i am using RPL calculators since 1989.
The learning curve was steep, but after one week i could use my 28s in most of its power.
On the converse, i struggle a little when switching to RPN (35s, Plus42)

One thing I noticed, while lurking on these forums for the past few months, is that RPL fans rarely miss an opportunity to say how much they prefer RPL over RPN. :-) But I guess it kinda worked, because I'm asking *how* I would learn RPL in the year 2023. (Which you haven't answered, heh.) No HP calculator currently uses it. The 50g is out of production. The HP Prime does not use it. Swiss Micro doesn't sell an RPL calculator. There are emulators on the Android Play Store, but anything that requires a ROM dump won't work for me, because I don't own any RPL calculators.

I found an app called 48sx and another one called Droid48. One seems to be a fork of the other, though I don't what the difference is. (I am not familiar with the differences between the 48S, SX, G, and GX). The initial complexity of the 48 keyboard is a slightly overwhelming. I click around and I get stuck in various menu contexts that I cannot get out of. EXIT doesn't seem to work. And what is this funny "{ HOME }" thing at the top (which also appears at the top of the Plus42)? I think learning the HP-48 series will help with the Plus42. I guess I will have to go through the manuals. I also get the impression that it is easier to learn a new calculator on a real physical calculator because I can play around with it faster. On the phone app, I don't know if nothing happened because I clicked the wrong key, or because my phone ignored my fat finger.

I suppose the question that I should have asked more directly is: *Why* should I learn RPL? It seems like a technological dead end to me, if no current calculator uses it. Judging from the size of the SysRPL reference manual, RPL may have collapsed under the weight of its own complexity. But I'm willing to spend a little bit of time to learn the basics of the HP-48, especially if that helps me understand the Plus42 app beter. The books recommended in the earlier posts ("HP 41/HP 48 Transitions" and "HP 48 Insights") look very promising. Thank you.

[Eric Rechlin]

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  There are emulators on the Android Play Store, but anything that requires a ROM dump won't work for me, because I don't own any RPL calculators.

ROMs are freely available so you don't need to own an RPL calculator first. Emu48 is the way to go on Android, as it's much more modern than the other emulators.

[bxparks]

(11-28-2023 05:23 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  There are emulators on the Android Play Store, but anything that requires a ROM dump won't work for me, because I don't own any RPL calculators.

ROMs are freely available so you don't need to own an RPL calculator first. Emu48 is the way to go on Android, as it's much more modern than the other emulators.

Freely available legally? If they were legal to distribute, I would expect Emu48 to just include them. I'm not going to download illegal ROMs from some random warez site.

[Marco Polo]

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  One thing I noticed, while lurking on these forums for the past few months, is that RPL fans rarely miss an opportunity to say how much they prefer RPL over RPN. :-) But I guess it kinda worked, because I'm asking *how* I would learn RPL in the year 2023. (Which you haven't answered, heh.) No HP calculator currently uses it. The 50g is out of production. The HP Prime does not use it. Swiss Micro doesn't sell an RPL calculator. There are emulators on the Android Play Store, but anything that requires a ROM dump won't work for me, because I don't own any RPL calculators.

I admit to be a 48/50 series fan, due to my job.
Such calculators have a combination of features I could not find in any other calculator and I heavily rely upon in my job: unit of measure management and its integration in single equation and multiple equation solvers.
Furthermore, they are fully customizable via user defined menus and keys.

I tried Prime, Casios, TIs but none of them can replace my 48 and 50.
The only calculator that might (if Thomas adds a multiple equation solver...) replace them is Plus42.

And, just to puntualyze, I have a 50g on my desk at work, a 35s in my backpack and Emu48 and Plus42 on my smartphone.
Just to say I use both RPL and RPN :-)

[Marco Polo]

(11-28-2023 05:34 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(11-28-2023 05:23 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  ROMs are freely available so you don't need to own an RPL calculator first. Emu48 is the way to go on Android, as it's much more modern than the other emulators.

Freely available legally? If they were legal to distribute, I would expect Emu48 to just include them. I'm not going to download illegal ROMs from some random warez site.

Completely legal for personal use, AFAIK

[Thomas Okken]

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  And what is this funny "{ HOME }" thing at the top (which also appears at the top of the Plus42)?

That's the path of the current directory.
https://thomasokken.com/plus42/#directories

[Chumango]

Question about Plus42. If I get a new phone is it transferable to the new phone, or would I need to purchase it again? Does it make a difference if the new and old are different platforms, i.e. Apple and Android?

[Thomas Okken]

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  I suppose the question that I should have asked more directly is: *Why* should I learn RPL? It seems like a technological dead end to me, if no current calculator uses it. Judging from the size of the SysRPL reference manual, RPL may have collapsed under the weight of its own complexity.

Programmable calculators had their heyday roughly from the late '70s to the early '90s. They became popular because they were an affordable way to automate complex calculations, for people who didn't have access to computers, when computers cost a fortune and took up a large room.

Once PCs became inexpensive, most of the market for programmable calculators disappeared. What was left were markets where portability was important, like education and engineers working in the field. And those markets gradually got eaten up by handheld computers, i.e. PDAs and smartphones.

I don't think there's anything wrong with RPL per se, it's just that it represents a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Almost anything you can do in RPL, you could also do in C or Java or C# or Mathematica.

No software system collapses under the weight of its complexity, that's just not a thing. If you think the RPL documentation is intimidating, that's nothing compared to the documentation of a modern computer system with its languages and libraries. Even back in the '90s, the full documentation set for a Sun workstation would take up half a bookcase.

Having said all that, programmable calculators still have their uses. That's why this forum is still active, and that's why I wrote Free42 and Plus42. Personally, I prefer Plus42 over RPL calculators, but I'm not going to say that anyone who prefers RPL is wrong. The fact that HP no longer sells RPL calculatos is just because the market for these machines has become too small to be interesting to them, not because there's no use for those devices at all any more.

[Thomas Okken]

(11-28-2023 08:01 PM)Chumango Wrote:  Question about Plus42. If I get a new phone is it transferable to the new phone, or would I need to purchase it again? Does it make a difference if the new and old are different platforms, i.e. Apple and Android?

Once you've bought the Android version, you can always install it on another Android device, even if you've uninstalled it in the meantime, and even years later. And the same is true for the iOS version.

But the Android and iOS versions are separate products, so if you've bought the Android version and you switch to iOS, you'll have to buy the iOS version. And vice versa.

[Eric Rechlin]

(11-28-2023 05:34 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(11-28-2023 05:23 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  ROMs are freely available so you don't need to own an RPL calculator first. Emu48 is the way to go on Android, as it's much more modern than the other emulators.

Freely available legally? If they were legal to distribute, I would expect Emu48 to just include them. I'm not going to download illegal ROMs from some random warez site.

Yes. And Emu48 for Android already has all the ROMs built-in (38, 39/40, 48SX, 48GX, 49/50), so your expectation is correct.

The ROMs are all on hpcalc.org, as well, anyway -- that's not a random warez site.

[polbit]

(11-28-2023 03:35 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  The book Steve recommends is indeed excellent, and coming from a 42S background should be quite comfortable. Assuming so, you should take a look at this book, also written by Bill Wickes; in my opinion, far and away the best book to learn RPL. If, after following this book for a few chapters, you aren't quite intrigued and wanting to know more, then bail-out, bail-out, bail-out; you won't enjoy using it.

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1570

RPL is very polarizing; nearly everyone I've known in the HP calculator community is either drawn into RPL and never looks back, or strongly prefers RPN; very few are middle of the road and/or go back and forth.

I would like to put myself in this elusive category! Having grown up on RPL, I never had any experience with RPN back in the day. I now play with my 41s probably more than the 48s, and enjoy both in different ways.

Of course now I get momentarily surpised once in a while why I get the "Too Few Arguments" error on my 48 when using one of the operators with no numbers on the stack... It's all RPN's fault!

[Peter Klein]

(11-28-2023 05:10 PM)bxparks Wrote:  I suppose the question that I should have asked more directly is: *Why* should I learn RPL? It seems like a technological dead end to me, if no current calculator uses it. Judging from the size of the SysRPL reference manual, RPL may have collapsed under the weight of its own complexity.

(11-28-2023 08:05 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Programmable calculators had their heyday roughly from the late '70s to the early '90s. They became popular because they were an affordable way to automate complex calculations, for people who didn't have access to computers, when computers cost a fortune and took up a large room.

Once PCs became inexpensive, most of the market for programmable calculators disappeared. What was left were markets where portability was important, like education and engineers working in the field. And those markets gradually got eaten up by handheld computers, i.e. PDAs and smartphones.

I don't think there's anything wrong with RPL per se, it's just that it represents a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Almost anything you can do in RPL, you could also do in C or Java or C# or Mathematica.

This is interesting. I have several RPN calculators. I also have a 48S and a 48G. The 48G was given to me, the 48S was a consolation prize I got when I was hunting down a 32Sii that was sold before I reached the seller's house. For years I've thought I should learn to use them. But every time I fool with them or read the manuals, my brain sends a "bail out, bail out!" signal. I feel that I've hit the point where you might as well use a computer.

That said, one of the reasons why I fool with calculators is to teach myself some math, including a bit of calculus. Embarrassing revelation: I never took calculus (I was a music and theater major).

What can the RPL machines do that my RPN machines can't? Well, for one thing, plot functions. (Yes, I know the 42s can, but it's very rudimentary.) But Plus42 looks like it can do very nice plots, and I'm already well down the learning curve on the 42s and Free42.

Suppose you were in my place. What would you do? Use one of my 48 machines? Use Plus42? Buy an HP Prime or a TI whatever-the-kids-are-using? Get a dedicated PC program?

[Thomas Klemm]

(11-29-2023 06:17 AM)Peter Klein Wrote:  What would you do? (…) Get a dedicated PC program?

I recommend to use Python.
And then install some additional libraries like:

• matplotlib
• numpy
• sympy
  

For experiments I use Jupyter.
This allows me to mix code with notes written in markdown sprinkled with LaTeX.

You can try it in your browser.
The aforementioned libraries are already installed and you can play with the examples.

You can also run a web-server locally and have the same experience.
Or then use Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code.

You can find plenty of courses online like this: Calculus Tutorial

[nickapos]

(11-29-2023 07:27 AM)Thomas Klemm Wrote:  

(11-29-2023 06:17 AM)Peter Klein Wrote:  What would you do? (…) Get a dedicated PC program?

I recommend to use Python.
And then install some additional libraries like:

• matplotlib
• numpy
• sympy
  

For experiments I use Jupyter.
This allows me to mix code with notes written in markdown sprinkled with LaTeX.

You can try it in your browser.
The aforementioned libraries are already installed and you can play with the examples.

You can also run a web-server locally and have the same experience.
Or then use Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code.

You can find plenty of courses online like this: Calculus Tutorial

I would like to extend this advice by adding sgemath in the mix https://www.sagemath.org/
It’s great for learning and experimentation.

[Marco Polo]

(11-29-2023 06:17 AM)Peter Klein Wrote:  What can the RPL machines do that my RPN machines can't? Well, for one thing, plot functions. (Yes, I know the 42s can, but it's very rudimentary.) But Plus42 looks like it can do very nice plots, and I'm already well down the learning curve on the 42s and Free42.

If you think about mere number crunching, they are more or less equivalent. Imho just a matter of personal preferences.

Compared to RPN models RPL calculators (except 28s) are fully customizable in terms of keyboard (41c has it) and user menus (much more powerful than 42s/Plus42 implementation)

If you think about programmability, there is a huge gap in favour of RPL. I am not speaking about ease of programming but about availability of data types (String, Array, List, etc), program branches and other features which are mostly not available in RPN models and make the RPL calculators much more flexible than RPNs.
Furthermore, RPL brought the still unpaired unit of measure management (present in Plus42) and solvers (single and multiple equations) which are extremely flexible and, imho, superior if compared to HP27s/Plus42 solver.
Just to give some examples about the use of my 50g (but also any 48s/g) in my job (chemical engineering):

• Pump and relevant piping sizing only using Multiple Equation Solver
• Quick sizing of an acid gas removal unit by amines (RPL program)
• Pipe thickness table according to ASME (RPL program)
  

I tried to reproduce the above tools in RPN calculators (35s and Plus42) but it was nearly impossible to me.

In addition in RPL calculators data and programs can be almost freely named and organized in directories, just like a normal PC (Plus42 is very similar to RPL models)

When i was studying engineering the available PCs where 8086/80286 with Dos, GW-Basic and Fortran77. Often it was faster and more effective to program my 48sx that writing a program on the PC :-)

(11-29-2023 06:17 AM)Peter Klein Wrote:  Suppose you were in my place. What would you do? Use one of my 48 machines? Use Plus42? Buy an HP Prime or a TI whatever-the-kids-are-using? Get a dedicated PC program?

I would go with emulators until i decide which calculator is best suited for my need.
I would include RPL models, Plus42, TI models, HP Prime and Numworks.
(i did this way some months ago, and decided to stay with 50g)
PC math software is for sure a more powerful solution, but cannot compete with calculators for ease of transportation and sometimes ease of use

[Thomas Okken]

Not to disagree with the overall point, but I do have a couple of nits to pick:

(11-29-2023 01:30 PM)Marco Polo Wrote:  If you think about programmability, there is a huge gap in favour of RPL. I am not speaking about ease of programming but about availability of data types (String, Array, List, etc), program branches and other features which are mostly not available in RPN models and make the RPL calculators much more flexible than RPNs.

The HP-42S has short strings and matrices, Free42 adds long strings and lists, and Plus42 adds equations and units.

What do you mean by "program branches and other features"?

[johnb]

(11-28-2023 03:35 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  RPL is very polarizing; nearly everyone I've known in the HP calculator community is either drawn into RPL and never looks back, or strongly prefers RPN; very few are middle of the road and/or go back and forth.

I feel called out here! [:ROTFL:]

However, my history with HP calcs may be to blame. I never had a time where I had a huge investment in RPN programs, such as many of us experienced with the 41c/cv/cx. The last time I had any big programs on a calculator as a student or for work was a LONG time ago, before I could afford an HP. Even then, the really sizeable programs got written and run on a Sharp Pocket computer, or my Apple II+, or my later PCs, or on a university mainframe.

So, I love my RPL machines because I can really customize them and make them my own. But I don't write RPL all the time, so when I want to add functionality, I have to relearn some things. And if I want to modify something, well, RPL is not exactly reader-friendly.

This also means that if I have something that can be solved with a simple program of a few dozen lines or less, I am much more likely to pick up one of my RPN machines and use keystroke programming. And for day-to-day number crunching, it's whatever machine I feel like using, or best fits the task (i.e. 16c for bit-fiddling, 48 for complex numbers or matrices, etc).

So, color me "weird." I jump back and forth.

[Marco Polo]

(11-29-2023 04:28 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Not to disagree with the overall point, but I do have a couple of nits to pick:

[
The HP-42S has short strings and matrices, Free42 adds long strings and lists, and Plus42 adds equations.

What do you mean by "program branches and other features"?

I was referring to the different construct for loops that are under PRG-->BRANCH menu (do, while, for, case, start), all the error handling commands, list processing....

[Thomas Klemm]

(11-29-2023 01:30 PM)Marco Polo Wrote:  PC math software is for sure a more powerful solution, but cannot compete with calculators for ease of transportation and sometimes ease of use

I have Carnets - Jupyter (with scipy) installed on the iPhone.

It works reasonably well: