About the continuous Fourier Transform

[Anders]

(12-09-2020 10:17 PM)medwatt Wrote:  I am the one that created the thread that is referenced a couple of posts above this one. The first time I created the thread, Tom (who apparently is part of the hp team) responded and said it's going to be almost impossible to add the continuous FT function because of copyright reasons. After I contacted the author, who responded very positively, I contacted Tom again several times via PM, but he didn't respond to any of them, even though he used to be responsive to other questions.

I am an electrical engineering student, with a focus on mixed signal design (read microelectronics). You'd be surprised, but I rarely needed a calculator after my circuit analysis class during my undergraduate days. In fact, I'd argue that the Casio 115MS is the best calculator for circuit analysis since it allows you to type and convert complex numbers with the least amount of key strokes. Most of the time, I am deriving equations for which I need the closed form expression of some integral (such as the FT), solution, etc. Also, I hardly need to plot anything trivial. It's nice to see all those beautiful plots that the prime can produce, but are you going to really be plotting parametric equations every day ?

So, why then did I buy the Prime. I was hoping that since it seems so capable, I would be able to do some nice stuff on it and that it might provide python support down the line as I wouldn't call the Prime Language a programming language. I also saw there's a control app for the Prime (written by a 3rd party) that was really enticing. I played with it a bit but realized it was too buggy. Anyway ... my prime has been gathering dust in my drawer for almost a year now.

First off thank you for writing the EE s/w, it's been useful.
Secondly, I agree that the biggest issue that is preventing Prime to be truly useful day to day for EE and CE students and pros is how much work it is to effectively use complex math moving between polar to a rectangular effectively, seamlessly and consistently in CAS and in Home view. It's just painful in Prime. Some has done some programs to compensate but its just not a good enough work around.
This alone makes Prime not the right calculator for EE.

And it is super frustrating because it has the potential, e.g. prime has the best implementation of Z transforms on any out of the box calculator etc.
Falling flat on the basic complex math is just sad. And it's not because we did not raise this point over the years - We did! Multiple times but to no avail.
I've pretty much given up.