Re:2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired...
by hn_throwaway_99 on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:02PM
(#32903915)
To be clear, I'm not arguing that the results from the calculator are wrong, and I totally agree that how it handles order-of-operations is correct.
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.
Re:2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired...
by contingencies on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:11PM
(#32904035)
Oh sorry totally missed that 5AM here :)
Re:2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired...
by 5fOleL5Eo2So8qi on Monday September 19, 2022 @05:01PM
(#32903899)
Their stated issue is that pressing enter after the 'subtotal' is not clear because it shows as `1 + 2 / 2` in the history instead of `(1 + 2) / 2`.
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!