[COFF] The most surprising Unix programs

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:

> In my case, I was probably a tad more careful because I was being
> forced to thinking in terms of precedence - but I was thinking about
> the equation.  Whereas with the TI I was just hitting the button per
> the equation on the paper.  I typed a tad faster on the TI than the HP
> because I was not thinking as much but ... I probably made more typing
> errors there because I thought less about what I was doing.

That sounds like a good summary.  I started out on TI programmable
calculators (my first was a TI-57 that I still have, and that still
works), but moved on to RPN with an HP41CV.  Today, I find entering
calculations into an RPN calculator simpler, because I naturally think
in terms of the stack.  With a traditional calculator, I have to look at
the (possibly just mentally imaged) formula that I need to evaluate, and
type it in character by character, whereas the RPN calculator lets me
think about the calculation to be performed, and just enter that.

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay