The Role of the Graphing Calculator in 2021 and Beyond

[Amafan]

As far as calculators go, I think the only hope for them comes from purpose built custom hardware, capable of fast hardware-based - high precision FP math and virtual modes for exploring by doing things like graphical rotations and outputs for driving 3D printers among other transducers. The GP processors being used today are fine for that, general purposes, and can do anything in software, but at the expense of power consumption and latency for high performance computing. HP became successful by developing custom calculator platforms, like Saturn.

The programming model must change as well. It should be possible to enter programs at a very abstract level rather than the low level programming required of current and past products. Even programming languages such as Python are too syntax driven. I want to be able to tell the calculator what I want done and where the data is to do it. I envision the calculator would have an intermediate operations format so that, if necessary, I can debug how its doing things and intervene to do midcourse corrections. Complex modes are secondary in my mind as they are primarily needed to develop mathematical models. I want a fast (1000x faster than a phone), precise number cruncher which is what calculators are good at doing. Communicate via Bluetooth to any peripherals and storage.

I don't see this happening but one can hope.