advantages of RPN

[Les Bell]

(05-22-2014 03:08 PM)Alvaro Wrote:  My personal opinion is that it will be very difficult to find something worst than UserRPN as a "programing Language".
While I agree that for manual calculations there is some advantage of PRN, I even like it, but as a "Programing Language" is the worst I can imagine.

There is no such thing as a "best" or "worst" programming language in absolute terms; a versatile programmer knows several or many, and picks them up and puts them down as appropriate to the task at hand. I do some things in Java, some in C++, some in Python and some as bash scripts. Recently I had to dig into some LaTeX code and write a document class, and trust me - as a programming language, TeX/LaTeX makes RPN look absolutely luxurious. But it was the best way of solving my problem.

For programming, RPN occupies a similar niche to bash. The user learns his way around the command line, picks up tools like wc, ls, grep, etc. and then wants to automate some repetitive processes - and shell scripts provide a way of doing that. Similarly, RPN keystroke programming provides a natural way of automating tedious calculations. I find it quite appropriate to the handheld calculator environment. If I want something with more expressive power, then I'll turn to a computer or tablet with one of the languages above.

But it's amazing how often some paper-and-pencil explorations of a problem lead naturally into a short RPN program that gives the desired answer.