thread repost: Discussion on Parser/UI Options

[Tim Wessman]

Quote: (Yesterday 09:23 AM)Tim Wessman Wrote: (...) Trust me, I do understand why people have said "well just use that cas engine", or "just buy one", or "why didn't you just use the 48 code base". Every single possible direction was considered and analyzed before the decision to move in this technical direction was taken. (...)

(...) Prime is doing very well. There are people getting into HP calculators that never have been before. Doors are opening that with a 50g, or a 51g, or a 52g, would never be open. For the vast majority of users who primarily use the calculator to do some math, draw some graphs, and take some tests - this calculator is amazing to them! I've seen people with no interest in math start playing with it, exploring the calculator, and getting excited about MATH! That just does not happen with other calcs in my experience.

(...) I think that giac has amazing capability. I have seen an impressive array of cases where it will solve something not possible in either casio/ti units, and even in some professional desktop or powerful open source cas systems (eg: maxima).
If I was to sum up the weaknesses, I would say that it makes some simple things more difficult then needed at times, and a lack of polish generated by restricted usage. That can be corrected though by feedback from a wide range of users and sources. Just in the past 6 months as there has been work with both HP and Geogebra I think it has made significant advances and is hugely better then it was before. I am quite confident that it will just continue to improve.

Impressive stuff, Tim.
Thank You for sharing your thoughts and analysis here. Your explanation makes sense to me.

As an old RPN die hard guy (that is one reason why I'm posting in a Museum Forum ), I am using nowadays my HP-Prime much more than my HP-50G, and I'm one of the guys looking into mathematics again!

And I'm not quitting RPN, thanks to the HP-Prime: it is there in Home mode, and I must say it looks to me as powerful and flexible as the classic RPN calculators of the past (yes, I used them quite a lot, and still have a few in my collection).

As for RPL as a programming language, I understand the reasons why so many people here like it, but for me, after spending so many years on my youth coding in very low level languages (from mainframes to micro-controllers, using machine code, assembly, PL/M, you name it), I really prefer to code in a high level structured language that can be easily documented and understood by anyone working with computers - and HP has got one dialect of such kind of languages: it is called HP-PPL.

Lastly, I agree with all the others here about the "issues" and misbehavior found in the Prime: HP should fix it as soon as possible (where possible...), to maintain the customers happy and of course, maintain the high standards of quality that made HP a well established brand in the good old days.
--
Jose Mesquita