Everyday use of programmable Calculators without Continuous Memory/Storage Devices

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(12-17-2022 06:04 PM)Siegfried Wrote:  I wonder how people used those. Did they program them as required, keep a written "library" of programs to type in when solving a particular problem or just leave them switched on to save their programming work?

I can only talk for myself here, others may have done it differenty. I have used (*) a programmable calculator during my last two years at school, during all of university (aeronautical engineering) and occasionally later at work (but really only very little). Over a period of maybe ten years. Mostly it was my beloved Ti-59 which could even have stored my little programs on magnetic cards. But there are still some unused cards among the twenty or so that were supplied with the calculator. Simply because most of the programs were required only once. Some equations and constants required to find a solution for a given task. Tomorrow the task will be different enough so that yesterday's programs will not help solving it. No need to conserve them, another day, another problem. This I why I chose engineering and not bank loan management as a profession.

Regards
Max

(*) I have put the word "used" in bold because now I only collect programmable calculators and toy around with them. This is no proper use case for these machines that in their day were little wonders of engineering.