Who needs the system's default calculator anyway?

[pier4r]

(01-03-2018 09:47 PM)TheKaneB Wrote:  May I ask you what kind of calculations did you run for so many hours on the 50G and the Prime?

If I had the need for some heavy lifting calculation I would use a regular PC with Python or even C++ (or Mathematica if I really needed advanced symbolic Math functions not easily found anywhere else)

Nothing special, mostly personal investigations that requires a lot of trials.
http://pier4r.wikidot.com/pierworks:arti...formatcomp

On the prime I am doing this (hopefully I will write a little summary soon):
https://app.assembla.com/spaces/various-...e_size.txt

preliminary results:
https://app.assembla.com/spaces/various-...-01-02.txt

It took like a night (~8h) on a nvidia shield k1 (the prime is not using multiple CPUs). On the 50g + userRPL , saving single results on the SD card, would have taken some days I guess.

Sure I could do them in python, javascript, php, java, c#, ocaml, R and what not (likely not C++ or compiled stuff). But I like to have a "dedicated" environment and I like to use what I have (because it is not that I have deadlines for my investigations).

Now with python, javascript, c# and what not, I may need this or that OS version and not and old one. I may need to keep the programming language interpreter updated to keep using the libraries that may be updated as well (numpy for example), etc... So after a while it is a chore to setup all of it for quick investigations.

Consider that I like to run my devices into the ground with use, because I feel like a waste if I don't use functioning stuff that I bought. Therefore I may not have always the last OS or enough resources for a certain programming language.

I see it like "I would like to eat my sandwidch" but before I need to assemble the chairs and the table, while I have little spare time in general because I want to do other stuff as well. I go outside and I buy something, opportunity cost.

matlab, scilab, mathematica & co would fit better the requirement since they are self contained, so I do not need to search for this or that library. Nonetheless I need a computer that runs them if the procedure takes long, and I don't want to hear fans for long time (at least not nowadays). Or I do not really have a computer that fits their system requirements.
Moreover I already use the computer by myself, then having something running in the background does not really help. For this reason I have the prime that can burn those tablets that are not often used, let it do it!

Plus I can carry the prime around with an android phone, it won't be that easy to do the same (with a user interface as usable as the prime) with the other self contained environments (matlab, scilab, matematica, octave and what not).

Or also the 50g, is not that it is always busy, so it can compute as well. The point is that it is a bit too slow with my algorithms (I repeat, newRPL may change the situation).

So for my situation, the prime wins.

If I would have had a better and more expensive homelab and less self imposed limits, then likely I could have used something else.