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Garth Wilson · 12-20-2023, 10:27 PM

(12-18-2023 11:00 AM)carey Wrote:
(12-18-2023 07:56 AM)carey Wrote: However calculations aren't done by hand anymore

(12-18-2023 09:23 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote: I guess you live in a world different from mine.

If you are claiming to do most calculations with paper and pencil (which is obviously what I meant by "calculations aren't done by hand anymore" as I spoke of RPN mimicking hand calculations (and a handheld calculator is a machine), then yes, I live in a different world from yours!

Not particularly by hand with pencil on paper; but when I'm designing circuits, I definitely have the calculator nearby, and pick it up often, and work it without equations in front of me.

Quote:
(12-18-2023 07:56 AM)carey Wrote: so there's no need to mimic hand calculations and RPN's intuitiveness with numeric operations is offset by RPN's torturousness when working with equations without numbers.

(12-18-2023 09:23 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote: Only a small part of programming is math and equations though.

If we're talking about RPN programming on a calculator (this thread?), and your experience is that only a small part of that programming is math and equations, then you're living in a different world than mine

Much of programming is logic, strings, and things other than equations. The entire reason I got into HP-41 was HP-IL and the ability, through the HP82169A HPIL-to-IEEE488 interface converter, to control and take data from equipment on the workbench. Up to that point I had only been using algebraic calculators, most intensely my TI-59, writing programs that overflowed its memory and needed cards fed to to it at various points, kind of like disc-swapping. I found the HP-41's RPN to be very natural though, and quite suitable for forming the command strings to send to the workbench equipment. (This was before laptops, and I sometimes didn't have room on the workbench for a laptop anyway.)

(12-18-2023 07:56 AM)carey Wrote:
(12-18-2023 09:23 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:
(12-18-2023 07:56 AM)carey Wrote: (imagine writing words in a sentence backwards).

It is my understanding that some spoken languages are indeed RPN, like that where we would say "put on shoes," in Korean it comes out more like "shoes, install."

The fact that it was necessary to select a language (Korean) which most English-speakers find difficult to learn for an example of backwards wording seems only to prove my point. The comparison of writing equations backwards to backwards wording was only an analogy. More relevant, modern Korean is written left to right like English, yet you will not find Koreans writing equations backwards.

What I meant was that maybe a reason you think RPN is harder is partly because your native spoken language is not RPN, while native speakers of a language that is RPN (like Korean apparently is) would find RPN calculators more natural. But there you go again, talking about "writing equations." Part of what I'm saying is that in the case of many of the calculations we do in engineering, we don't start with an equation in front of us. We go through it without ever looking at, or writing, an equation.