WIRED; It's Past Time for You To Ditch That Fancy Scientific Calculator

[Claudio L.]

The "reasons" why we all need to ditch our calculators are laughable:

1. You can save the code for future reference.
2. The quadratic formula sucks.
3. I can print intermediate values
4. You can do dot product of vectors.
5. You can change one value and redo the calculation.
   

Clearly, from the list of requisites above the ONLY possible conclusion would be... Python! Think about it, the only tool in the universe that can do a dot product AND save the code for later use, not to mention the wonders of the "print" function that no other language has.

I would've been closer to the article's position if it would've proposed the use of a more specific math environment than plain python: Matlab, Octave, Mathematica, or more physics/engineering oriented like MathCAD and its clones. I think those tools are what replaces calculators when the work load is "too much", not a plain language like python (granted, there's plenty of libraries for python to get almost anything done, but it's not as clean and never will be - see the decimal examples down below).
But it's all in the complexity of the problem. Opening a browser (or any of the tools above) is way too slow to get anything simple done quickly so you have to justify that time with the complexity of the problem you are trying to solve. The example given in the article can be solved in a 50g just by typing the original problem expressions (not the solution to the quadratic formula, as he had to do in python), provide the variables values and hit solve, so it beats python on a browser by a long shot.
What's the real benefit in opening a browser, typing the numbers and pray that a "marketing engine" gives you a correct answer?
"1 ft only 0.2999 meters! limited time only, get it now at veryverycheap.com!"

I'd rather type the numbers on a device (or application) created/designed to give me an accurate answer, rather than sell ads.

On a side note:
The OP talks about accounting and Excel... those things don't mix! (not Excel's fault, actually, but binary floating point in general)
Real accounting requires decimal arithmetic, so Excel is out of the question for accounting, and so is python.
Before somebody jumps with "python can use decimal arithmetic". That's true, but look at a few examples of what python code looks like when using decimal. Hardly as clean as the article's example, and not very practical for quick prototyping and solving.
If you do accounting, a calculator using decimal math is a necessary tool. An application or web interface using decimal would do just fine if you don't make heavy use of it and can put up with the slower pace.