Re: Datasheet-flation?

On 2024-12-02 16:55, john larkin wrote:

On Mon, 2 Dec 2024 15:59:32 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
 

On 2024-12-02 15:17, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 12/2/24 14:19, Carlos E.R. wrote:
[...]
>

I hated HP calculators with their reverse polish notation. I bought TI
instead, or Casio later.
>

>
That's surprising from a person comfortable with software.

>
I enter calculations in the calculators in the same way I do when I
write Pascal, C, Basic, or plain language.
>
>

I found algebraic entry calculators clumsy. I went the
opposite way.
>
What gripe do you have with RPN?

>
Not human.

 Do you program in Basic? It is not popular with the coder culture.

I had to maintain programs made by other people before me, in Basic. Before that job I did a bit of Basic with borrowed Spectrums, and then Casio calculators had Basic.
In the engineering world, engineers in the 80's figured out things that could be done with computers, and they pioneered the field, in Basic, because PCs came with it, and it appeared simple enough. They had the engineering knowledge of their field, and learning Basic they invented things that could be done with computers that a computer profesional would not have imagined.
We owe a lot to them.
This is an electronics group, so perhaps you tried Microcaps (80s). At the time I saw it I think it was Microcaps II. You could draw an schematic and test it in your PC. It was done in compiled Basic. And it had bugs, crashes that the interpreter had not bumped into (like dividing by zero) that made the compiled program to crash. Some of the bugs a proper compiled language would have detected at compile time.

 I loved Basic-Plus on the Dec RSTS time-share system.
 I use the PowerBasic Console Compiler now. It's awesome. It has stuff
like PRINT USING$ and TCP OPEN and 80-bit floats.
 I have a few ee programs I could share.

Sorry, I don't do much programming nowdays...
--
Cheers, Carlos.