The Prime is just an Expensive Toy

[HP User]

(12-08-2019 10:50 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  

(12-08-2019 10:21 PM)HP User Wrote:  I also believe a company could design and construct the ultimate calculator. They just need great vision, ideas, a whole collection of necessary disciplines working together, with someone not tainted by whatever could be bad for the product, and just do it. There's the problem: something is missing, and it could easily be in the design/vision department.

I don't believe that. No two people can agree on what the "Ultimate Calculator" is! Look at the endless discussion at SwissMicros just aimed at a decent keyboard for an upcoming calculator! That discussion doesn't even mention features of the machine and yet it's been going on for years! Start a poll and ask what language this chimera of a calculator should use. I'll bet you get dozens of answers, each from a person who thinks the other languages are crap.

My ultimate calculator wouldn't include CAS but would include a full version of cPython, full version of ISO BASIC, would allow installation of other programming languages, have hardware ports for tape drives, printers, disk drives, lab equipment, whatever. It would have battery life measures in weeks, not hours and yet would be the fastest calculating device in existence. Would anyone but me buy one? I doubt it.

No, the "Ultimate Calculator for Everyone"™ doesn't exist and so no company could produce one.

But it's possible. We could start by asking this essential question: is it logically possible? (I.e., can the concept exist without logical inherent contradiction?) Yes, it can. Now we need to ask very rationally, very objectively, what such a device would imply and what its definition is. Then, with all humanly or otherwise available knowledge, skill, technology, certainly it is possible to actually design and construct. Problem is it's difficult, something's usually missing, or something else (like people in companies disagreeing).

I think I must point out that I don't mean that the ultimate calculator is only so because of people's personal wishes, agreements, opinions, etc., (and so that many "ultimate ones" could exist (but then what's the point of the word "ultimate?)), but I'm referring to a kind objective ultimateness. Abstractly, we rationally and intuitively and rightly may think that such a device exists. After all, we have been improving things all the time as well, as if there's an ultimate point we understand exist and which we approach, a point where it literally ends, a kind of perfection or completion.

We may not achieve it right now, but it's certainly possible.