22 Jun
2011
22 Jun
'11
12:21 p.m.
On 19 June 2011 19:21, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I am sure different people think in differnet ways. For me, as soon as I
started learning RPN, I found it very natural, and I picked it up in
about an hour.
[Reasons why I use an RPN calculator snipped]
[Explanation
cut]
Sorry, I missed this message until Jonas quoted it.
I understand RPN intellectually, but not at a "gut level" - as such I
find it a real pain to actually /use/ - & since there is no need to in I'm intrigued. I don't understand, but
that's OK.
What don;'t you understand ? RPN, or why I prefer to use it? anything I use, that means I don't, and thus I
never improve &
probably never will. A bit like binary or octal.
I, of course, use binary and octal all the time...
RPN is, I suppose rather differnt to many modern
computer products. The
latter seem to be designed to make simple problems trivial, but
unfortunately, they make complex problems very difficult or impossible.
RPN (and in gnerally the tools I prefer) makes simple problems pehaps a
little more dififcult (but is it really harder to type 2 2 + rahter than
2 + 2?) but make dififuclt problems a lot easier. Since generally I sue
calcualtors and computers for difficult problems that I can't solve in my
head, I prefer such tools.
Fair enough. I think you have a point there. There is some "dumbing
down" occurring in modern computers. Mostly, I'm strongly in favour of making them simpler, easier & thus more accessible
to more people -
but that does mean that sometimes, functionality is lost, & that's
I am, of coruse, not in favour of making this difficult to use for no
good reason. For example, while I know many of the ASCII codes for common
characters in binary (I spend enough timinm,e repairing printers,
terminals, etc), I would not want to rplace this keyboard with a row of 7
or 8 toggle wrichs and a 'send character' betton.
The thing is, that while I use a computers -- a lot -- I don't _always_
use a computer. I use whatever tools I feel are most approrpatie to the
job (OK, somtimes I get it wrong).
Most of the time, when I am designing some bit of electronics, I sketch a
scheamtic on a bit of paper and do the calcualtions on a hand calcualtor.
You can argue that I only design simple stuff, which may well be true
(and to be honest, I probsably _wouldn't_ use this method for anything
very complicated), but for such simple designs, a CAD system would
actually slow me down. So I don't use one.
Nor do I use a word processor to record, say, the colours of wires I am
disconnectiong. I use a notebook. A paper notebook.
The other day I needed to make a new main bearing fro a rotary telephone
dial. I did a sketch in aid notbook and marked in the important
dimensions. I machines part of it, then tried it for it, and made
adjustments. This diagram would certain;t not have been suitable for
giving to a production departmetn, but for what I was doing, making a
1-off part that I could fit to the other parts by hamd, it was, IMHO, the
right solution
No, I use a computer when the job is too difficult to do by hand.
Normally this means a lot of repitition. I have better things to do than
do the same job over nad over again. Wht this means is that any computer
without a probgrammign language, or at least a scripting language, is
useless to me. Unforutantely, such things are the first to go when the
product is dumbed down.
It is also a common mistake to confuse 'easy to learn' with 'easy to
use'. I want the latter, which may not mean the former. In othre words, I
am happy to spend days/weeks/months learning how to use a tool if that is
going to mean I cna do something I couldn't do before, or will produce a
superior result, etc. I will not want to use soemthign that takes half an
hour to learn if it doesn't improve on what I could already do.
Unfortuantel, a lot of modern products seem to be in that category. Quick
to be able to get them to do something, but you can never get them to
really help you.
-tony