Here's a question: is it possible to implement this with a Python
module, or is that absolutely not a thing that can be done? I've seen
some odd things done with modules.
On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 8:46 AM John
On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 5:26 AM Stephen J. Turnbull
wrote: Alexandre Brault writes:
On 2021-04-03 12:07 a.m., John wrote:
Visually this means I can identify each particular operation and its relationship with the next term, then ignore it (visually track parts that no longer matter for understanding the equation) and look at the next parts:
1: b c f + d % e * g h - 2 / ** / 2: b ____ d % e * g h - 2 / ** / 3: b ________ e * g h - 2 / ** / 4: b ___________ g h - 2 / ** / 5: b ___________ ___ 2 / ** / 6: b [___________ _____ **] /
Along the way, I've understood each part, and its relationship with the rest of the computation. b/((((c+f)%d)*e)**((g-h)/2)))
Your very long postfix equation may or may not be more readable than the infix version with parentheses, but I'd argue that neither is more readable than a version decomposed in bite-sized operations over multiple statements, each using a self-documenting variable name. That, to me, is much more readable and fits much more within the philosophy of Python code
+1 That was my immediate reaction, too:
This is what temp variables like ____, ________, ___________, ___, and _____ are for! Although I prefer giving them less opaque names. :-)
Helps, but does spread the information out. It also requires finding useful names, and there aren't always meaningful names for intermediate steps.
I do love RPN for calculations, dc >> bc any day IMO. But for me, RPN is write-only. The advantage is that I can frequently do the calculation twice in dc in the time it takes to do it once and verify correct formula and no typos in bc.
Interesting that people find it write-only. I find it easier to modify a complicated equation in RPN than algebraic because it's easier to find precisely the part of the calculation I need and insert the extra code. I'd honestly been considering if we should have taught RPN first to give students a way to parse complicated algebraic equations by rewriting them in a less-opaque form, but quickly realized you never encounter anything more complicated than multiplying two polynomials in an educational setting..
Steve
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