[TUHS] The most surprising Unix programs

[Jon Steinhart]

Grant Taylor via TUHS writes:
>
> I'm asking from a point of genuine curiosity.  I've heard many say that
> RPN is easier, or that it takes fewer keys, or otherwise superior to
> infix notation.  But many of the conversations end up somewhat devolving
>
> into religious like comments about preferences, despite starting with
> honest open-minded intentions.  (I hope this one doesn't similarly devolve.)

I've been a RPN fan since I got my first HP-45 when I was a sophomore in
college.  I see the difference between RPN and algebraic notation as follows.
RPN is much easier when thinking on the fly; algabraic is much easier when
copying equations off of a page.  I think that this mainly comes from not
having to worry about parentheses with RPN.  Moving things around on the stack
when having to rearrange is easier than having to move things in and out of
registers.

Jon