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

[EugeneNine]

(08-09-2017 04:57 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  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.

Don't get me started on Excel, I use it at work and am constantly amazed at the amount of bugs/issues it has. I find OpenOffice much more pleasant to use.