Why do calculator manufactures like to reinvent the wheel?

[Stefan]

(03-11-2014 10:08 AM)HP67 Wrote:  [...]HP has lock-in with engineers and scientists, surveyors, and other areas. People in those groups still use HP calculators every day, even though we also sit in front of PCs, carry smartphones, etc.[...]

I have to agree with Manolo here: In all my time in school, university and working in development departments of different companies I have seen exactly 4 people using HP calculators. 2 of them are very likely pensioned by now. 3 of them were physics teachers/professors, 1 engineer. I really wouldn't call that a lock-in ^^.

Regarding the point that something like python would be ressource hungry: If you take the the anaconda scientific python distribution as example its 1.6GB. Ok that is really a lot. But I mean the Anaconda distribution probably includes everything one could imagine, and 70-90% of the stuff one wouldn't need on a portable calculator. But also: What is 2GB storage nowadays? As a consumer you can't even buy such small storage sizes anymore :-D (or at least you have to look really hard).

I don't understand the point that a higher powered processor would reduce the build quality of the calculator. Why should it?

To the point that a standard language would have been adapted too much so that in the end it wouldn't be the same standard language anymore: I'd say the main reason for TI to modify the Lua scriptiting capabilites were that direct file IO and OS functions could open unwanted doors to circumvent their security features (which is not desired by TI).
For a embedded device one probably would have to write some classes for the user interface, which is of course different from a PC. But since Python doesn't really come with a standard way for GUIs that wouldn't make a big difference in the end. I can run Python code, which doesn't use any GUI features, on my phone pretty much unaltered.

I also didn't meant to say that HP PPL is hard to learn. It's really easy.

Finally: Thanks for the comments everyone. But please don't start a flame war :-)