The Prime is just an Expensive Toy

[DrDarius]

(12-08-2019 10:07 PM)HP User Wrote:  

(12-08-2019 09:10 PM)DrDarius Wrote:  I agree with medwatt. HP Prime is a, to certain extent, a toy. (Let's not discuss "expensive" part here.)

I think I must point out that medwatt stated that

Quote:The Prime is just an Expensive Toy

The word "just" indicates his view is actually much harsher than your "to a certain extent" and the rest of your post (which in part is about your dealing with Prime's problems, getting used to them, etc., which is not a pro nor a con of the machine itself, but your own dealing). Seeing it all together with his post, I think he deems the Prime as it is (without dealing with its problems, and without configuring it, etc.) really below what it should've been bigtime.

I still like the device, or maybe rather I accepted it, but only because I have gotten used to it and so on, and it serves my purposes. I believe this is in principle what you did too.

(Sorry for quoting entire post, but I believe it's important in the context of my response.)

You are right, my overall opinion about HP Prime is much less harsher than medwatt's. And your sentence about accepting HP Prime's flaws is also correct.

Let me elaborate (just a tiny bit, by no means a full set) on pros and cons. Just for fun.

Pros: capabilities (quite rich set of built-in functions), speed, memory, color display with a touch screen, programming language which allows for more less elegant programming, and handling of crashes which, in most cases, does not lead to losing data.

Cons: bugs, bug, bugs. My biggest pet peeve: during learning the PPL I made many stupid errors in my programs. Some of those errors resulted in calculator's reset, or (worse!) abnormal behavior which could be eliminated only by forcing the calculator to reset. Keep in mind that I was writing in the language that did not allow me to access internal functions of the OS. My errors should be handled by the OS in a way which does not lead to its instability. In other words: the OS could be written better.

For me the calculator is a tool. I learned how to used calculator's resources to aid my work, I learned how to customize the device to my needs in the best possible way. There are many things I would do differently if I were a designer of HP Prime, but I realize that the calculator was not designed especially for me, and I have to compromise. And I believe that HP Prime, albeit not perfect, has the largest number of pros from all the calculators I used in my life.

This, I believe, summarizes the difference between my point of view, and this of medwatt's.

Darius