Anyway, I've recently built a scientific calculator using mostly the same codebase as that compiler, you can download it here.
I am not sure what kind of calculator software would be most useful. To me it seems like the thing that makes it hard to do math is algebra, but not the algebra such as matrix multiplication or solving the systems of linear equations, which is relatively easy to do both by hand and by using a piece of software, but those repetitive and error-prone tasks of preparing the systems of linear equations to be solved suing the methods of linear algebra. This can especially be seen in, for instance, circuit analysis, and the methods such as mesh analysis or node voltages help very little, if at all (they are much more confusing than the Kirchoff's Laws are, and you are perhaps even more likely to get things wrong if you try to apply them instead of the Kirchoff's Laws). It seems like it would be a wonderful problem to be solved by a computer (it's so repetitive), but we see that calculators either don't even attempt to simplify arithmetic expressions, or they suck at it to the point of that feature being useless. On the other hand, I also have no idea how to make a program that would simplify systems of equations to the point when they can be solved using the easy algebraic methods.
So, what do you think, what useful feature do modern calculator softwares lack? Do you have a bright idea how to implement it?
I am not sure what kind of calculator software would be most useful. To me it seems like the thing that makes it hard to do math is algebra, but not the algebra such as matrix multiplication or solving the systems of linear equations, which is relatively easy to do both by hand and by using a piece of software, but those repetitive and error-prone tasks of preparing the systems of linear equations to be solved suing the methods of linear algebra. This can especially be seen in, for instance, circuit analysis, and the methods such as mesh analysis or node voltages help very little, if at all (they are much more confusing than the Kirchoff's Laws are, and you are perhaps even more likely to get things wrong if you try to apply them instead of the Kirchoff's Laws). It seems like it would be a wonderful problem to be solved by a computer (it's so repetitive), but we see that calculators either don't even attempt to simplify arithmetic expressions, or they suck at it to the point of that feature being useless. On the other hand, I also have no idea how to make a program that would simplify systems of equations to the point when they can be solved using the easy algebraic methods.
So, what do you think, what useful feature do modern calculator softwares lack? Do you have a bright idea how to implement it?
