In defence of QWERTY, it did a decent job for what it was designed for (reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time), but really oughtn’t have lasted past the point where the risk of jamming was not longer there.
Well, they’ve sold the same product for about the same price since 1970, so it makes sense. I have no idea how schools can require a specific device from a specific manufacturer. It’s just straight up market control by a public entity.
For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn’t useful if you’re doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don’t. There’s a “C/CE” but there isn’t a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there’s no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you’re using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It’s pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you’re out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it’s a UI issue that you can’t just say “hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it”.
If there is any nuance beyond a 4-function calculator with a single clear button, any nuance or deviation from any kind of standard will not be clearly explained.
There’s never a backspace key, only two “clear” buttons that have nuance between them and little to no description as to which does what.
Calculators just have a bad user interface in general. It’s pretty amazing that the UI was established in 1970 and was never changed after that.
ah yes, wait until you find out about the qwerty keyboard. Or better yet, the fucking ABCDE layout for some godforsaken reason.
In defence of QWERTY, it did a decent job for what it was designed for (reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time), but really oughtn’t have lasted past the point where the risk of jamming was not longer there.
Well, they’ve sold the same product for about the same price since 1970, so it makes sense. I have no idea how schools can require a specific device from a specific manufacturer. It’s just straight up market control by a public entity.
Curious to know why ? Basic functionality seems very obvious and friendly to me.
For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn’t useful if you’re doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don’t. There’s a “C/CE” but there isn’t a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there’s no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you’re using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It’s pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you’re out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it’s a UI issue that you can’t just say “hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it”.
If there is any nuance beyond a 4-function calculator with a single clear button, any nuance or deviation from any kind of standard will not be clearly explained.
There’s never a backspace key, only two “clear” buttons that have nuance between them and little to no description as to which does what.