A case against the x<>y key

[Les Bell]

(05-11-2015 02:16 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  It is as necessary as the four arithmetic operation keys, and ENTER.

Amen! Back in 1973 I had the earliest Sinclair Scientific calculator, which had a three-level stack and no x<>y key. This quite often meant writing down and re-entering intermediate results - a process that was so frustrating that it led me to save all my wages from working through the Easter 1974 university break to buy an HP-45 - which did have x<>y, and a lot more.

(On the other hand, the Sinclair Scientific didn't have an ENTER key, but that wasn't as big a problem in practice - IIRC, after powering on, the stack was filled with zeros, so the first number was followed by "+", which added zero to it. Ugly, but. . . )