Really really fast BASIC handheld

[pier4r]

(01-12-2019 10:00 PM)berndpr Wrote:  Hallo!

1. You have to buy Smilebasic at the Nintendo Online Shop like a Game and download to the 2DS or 3DS. Actual version is 3.6.0.
The Nintendo New 2DS XL and 3Ds are released at 2017.
I think, this shows the progress of the handheld devices, but sadly our favorite hobby - calculators - are still years behind.

I don't agree on this. In fact I think you have got it backwards.

While I welcome that gaming devices - that are really fast because games are at times complicated and not so optimized - open up to programming with friendly ides, it was not often the case.

Playstation, ps2, ps3, xbox equivalents, nintendo console equivalents and other consoles after the 5th generation (n1) had enough hardware to support friendly programming (that is, with an intuitive ide). So from 1994 if not earlier this was an option. But no one is going to invest resources if there is no audience for them.

Only recently programming is becoming mainstream so people like to try it as a game. But if the IDE is not there, the fast hardware is practically unusable.

Instead calculators are meant for math. So one can use them to find solutions from day 1.
The solution time of a problem is not only the running time of the program, but also the time to develop it. If one is not able to develop a solution on a faster hardware due to missing tools, the solution time is practically infinite. Paper and pen is faster than that.

Due to the solution time including the developing time, I also see it as silly when someone claims that a friendly basic IDE on a gaming platform is already better than prime, nspire, 50g or even the 71B . This because for common operations the simple IDE may be enough, matching a scientific calculator, but what about less common ones?

can you show numbers as fractions easily? like 0.125 is 1/8 . My sharp el506w from 2002 does it quickly.

I bet you have to write a function for that and I bet everyone else has to as well as there is not yet a centralized way to share programs (like a forum or a repository). Something like this: https://smilebasicsource.com/page?pid=1210 but more organic and systematic.

Can you do operations on angles (and similarly with time) seen as degrees minutes
seconds?
say 5d 3m 2s + 0d 58m 96s = 6d 2m 38s

Sure you can, but you need to build a function for it. Part of the solution time. Even fixes for bugs are part of the solution time.
Can you invert a matrix? I bet you need to define a function for it as well.

Can you find roots? For many mathematical functions the el506w or even the hp 34c, can.
And so on.

So at the end of the day either you program your math library (a nice project), or if you are not prepared the chances are that for not so common operations someone with a prime/50g/nspire/ti89/71b/what you have gets the answer months before you.

So no, as long as I don't see a proper math library for smilebasic on the 2DS (or equivalent combinations), easy to set up and use for everyone having the platform (that is, actually it should be like "download this"), those platforms are tens of years back the most advanced calculators.

And I didn't touch the problem of the missing input interface. If we have to compute many single multiplications inputting numbers, with a simple calculator I'm faster than you on the 2ds with smile basic.

So: careful to mistake execution speed as silver bullet. I talk from experience as I learned through pain how much value a good ready made math library holds. For this I still use the 50g and RPL. The thingy is amazing.

n1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console