HP Prime - worthy successor to HP-71B ?

[Vincent Weber]

I don't actually *hate* RPL the way Valentin and others do. I have been programming in RPL a lot back in 1991 on my trusty 48SX. It is an interesting, unified paradigm. I actually like its LISP side (self modifying software) but I came to dislike its FORTH side: everthing is in the stack, you must remember where, and do acrobatic DUP, ROT, ROLL, OVER...statements just to place things right. Which is a completely useless activity (the fun side apart) when you try to program an algorithm, all the more than you are on a handled device, so you need straight to the point simplicity rather than a full fledge OO language, for which I would prefer Java or C# on my PC...
Simple RPN and BASIC share this "simplicity on mobility" concept. And advanced BASIC such as HP-71B one, TI-89 one or HPPL have nothing to envy to RPL as far as sophisticated data types are concerned - you can easily manipulate matrices, lists, complex numbers with them, in a much more natural way that in RPL.
RPN made sense back in the days where algebraic entry was a pain (like on the TI-59) typing all these parentheses in the blind. It still makes sense on pocket calculators, because of its inner simplicity and elegance. But RPL is a weird hybrid concept: mixing RPN with commands - which turns into unnecessary complexity.

As someone once said: RPL makes complicated things simple, but simple things complicated
And complicated things can be done even easier than RPL in advanced BASIC.