While the single-value-view of a calculator removes visual context, if you are banging out multi-step calculations as a power user not having the standard order of operations would be odd.
The workaround, as you say, is to just press enter (equals) after each required subtotal. This is pretty semantically clear, that is - if you consider a traditional keyboard to even be a thing that young people are familiar with - and that is getting arguable!
Key corollary issues to the single-value-view nature of computer calculators are that they pull a lot of (now obtuse) cultural context from physical calculators plus regular mathematical context, none of which is obvious to occasional computer calculator software users.
It's probably high time this stuff was rejigged. Thanks for the paper tape tip!
What I am arguing is that the visual display in the "Paper Tape" view is wrong because it displays different answers for the same values.
That is, if you type 1 + 2 / 2, the answer shows up as 2 and the paper tape shows
However, if you type 1 + 2 = / 2 (that is, you type equals after the 1 + 2, which will show 3 on the screen, before typing the / 2 part), the last line of the paper type shows They need to add some parentheses in there.