Calculators you regret buying?

[polbit]

(12-13-2023 06:34 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello!

(12-13-2023 03:20 PM)polbit Wrote:  ...That doesn't however make RPL an "abomination" because you spent whole of two hours playing with an old 48SX and didn't grasp it/like it.

I understood this thread as an opportunity to share the (very personal!) feeling of "regret" after purchasing a calculator. At the time I bought the HP-48SX I had earned my living using and programming calculators and computers for several decades. Using programming languages and paradigms including calcultor keystroke programming in AOS and RPN, Basic, FORTRAN, C, C++, Pascal Mathematica and Java. For example, coming from C++, I did not even need a book to be able to write programs in Java... So when I got the HP-48 I thought I could use it and program just like any other HP I had come across. But no, they tried to invent a different kind of wheel. HP, no longer existing as a manufacturer of calculators, may have been able to sell their special kind of wheel for 30 years, but everybody else (Sharp, Casio, Ti, ...) continued to make round wheels and sold and still sell several orders of magnitude more of their product.

Regards
Max

I think there is a much better comparison with programming languages, as I look at RPN as good old K&R C with some inline assembly, whereas RPL would be more akin to C++. The transition from structured to object-oriented programming was quite dramatic for a lot of people, yet necessary for progress as complexity increased. HP did improve the wheel with RPL, and did so very successfully in the professional space.

Anyway, you are correct in that this thread started as sharing stories of regret in calculators. I shall refrain from turning it fully into another RPL debate. Cheers!