Re: algebraic simplification on the 50G Message #16 Posted by Nick on 28 Aug 2008, 10:27 a.m., in response to message #11 by George Bailey (Bedford Falls)
George, auto-simplification is not necessarily a "universal advantage". I would also really really prefer the easy way of the Titanium many times, but there are also many other cases.
Many too many problems and ways to solve them are much better understandable, or say "visible", when such expressions are not "simplified" down to the most simple level. Which of course auto-generates (;-)) the question about what simplification actually is. It seems to depend on the problem one works with. Perhaps the best compromise is to leave the entered object unchanged and at the same time provide good commands (and also manuals! ;-)) for manipulating it easily and correctly in any possible mathematical way? A hard problem.
As about the paleolithic, well, the HP48 is already in the museum, isn't it? So, guess who's next! ;-) Perhaps we are only just a bit ahead of that time when we talk here about EXP2POW and SIMPLIFY, ey? But soon the 49 and the 50 are to follow. And then... after that... what? Perhaps... exposing the HP35S and the fantastic achievements of developing software for (solely) number crunching using LBL A, and XEQ, and RTN?? Will *this* be the exposed piece of top calc technology after the HP50? What else are we going to hear on this world?
Admitting that a museum has to come up with things as they have been in the past, which of course is extremely interesting for itself, I start having a very strange by-taste that the once pioneering community of HP-enthusiasts has converted to something like a diva on her 90th birthday who simply can't accept that she isn't 20 anymore. Yes, we might have been up to the limit once, but the limit didn't wait for us. It didn't even care! And why should it? Time has no contracts with HP or anybody else. Now it is the year 2007 where we live and not 1970. This steady "glorification" of "those wonderful HP-machines" is nothing else than trying to reverse time where it once has been when "I was ooohh so young and enthusiastic".
The question is if I can still be that in *my* days.
Cheers!
Nick
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