INPUT stack lift: 32S vs. 42S

[rprosperi]

(10-19-2019 09:39 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  I think the behavior of INPUT makes sense in its own right, because it makes it easy to modify the existing value of the variable; getting pushed into Y means you can perform calculations on the original value without any preliminaries.

That's a good point. When exploring different inputs, performing some operations on the default value that INPUT provides is much easier this way. And I honestly have been using a DM42/42S for so long to write '41 programs', I've forgotten the 41 didn't have INPUT, it just got by with 'String' PROMPT. How quaint...

But one can see that the 32S approach is easier to initially grasp (not requiring subtle knowledge of things like stack-lift enable, etc.) and explain, so I presume they went that way as part of the overall simplifying that seemed to be happening with the HP-3xS series.

I incorrectly thought that the 32S came out after the 42S, but in fact it was 4 months earlier, so these 2 machines were being developed in parallel, both on the same SysRPL platform, so it is interesting that they chose to go 2 separate ways for this behavior.