On Saturday, March 8, 2014 4:27:25 PM UTC-6, Andrew Barnert wrote:
So your goal is that if someone is a TI89 expert but a Python novice, they can easily port a function from their TI89 to Python (or maybe even write a TI89-like desktop calculator program) with your library? That doesn't seem too unreasonable of a goal.
Your points are all mostly valid, taking all assumptions into account. Some of these folks actually have TI89's but don't really know how to use them yet. Some of them have TI84+, or TI83, some TI Nspire... some others. Mostly the comparison between the calc and python isn't the point. The point is using python to do the trig (or whatever) and along the way introducing programming. Its just one use case that is not too different than a thousand other "average" or naive user cases, where the folks are still on the learning curve but need to be introduced to computers and computer science as well as the maths. This will also be good for folks who know what they are doing and will now be able to do it just a little more efficiently. For folks who really know what they are doing spelling issues are not even a problem. So, we can help newbie/naive users without impacting advanced users like yourself. The bottom line is trying to eliminate as few surprises as possible, making the learning curve as easy and fun as possible. The point is not to make a calculator; rather to make a decimal floating point package for python that is flexible. Experienced users can use it for all kinds of purposes, and newbies can use it too. The experts on this list, like you, will have no problem using the package (if you want) and folks that are brand new to python will be able to use it too. At some point the decimal concepts will come up, and the decimal literal will come in very handy then. For folks using 3.3.4 or below obviously the caveats are going to need to be explained in the documentation... and my functions are going to need to take in floats and do something meaningful with them, as you saw in the square root routine. Its a little more hassle for me to code and maintain, but its less "surprise" impact on users will be worth it (esp for young wanna bee naiveté types). marcus