Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 12:24 AM, D'Arcy Cain <darcy at vybenetworks.com> wrote:
> On 09/19/2017 03:07 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>
>>> How relevant is the "people use calculators to do arithmetic" argument
>>> today?  Okay, so I'm old and cynical, but I know [young] people who
>>> don't (can't?) calculate a gratuity without an app or a web page.
>>
>>
>> Which is a form of calculator. People still learn to use calculators at
>> school, they still use them at work. They use Excel, which is prone to
>
>
> Wow.  I still remember decrying the use of calculators in school.  It seemed
> like the loss of actual math understanding.  When I was young (and not
> running from dinosaurs) we learned the addition and multiplication tables by
> heart (and received a few sore knuckles while we struggled) and then learned
> to do math by paper and pencil.  When it was time for a mechanical aid we
> got a slide rule.  I truly believe that doing so gave me the best
> understanding of math that I could get.  Now, of course, I use calculators
> and computers but I still understand the theory behind what I am doing.

I learned math the same way - and also a lot of algebra. I was
permitted to use a programmable calculator (on a PC) in high school
but only if I programmed it myself using primitives, which meant that
I had to prove that I'd mastered the math. Ended up with a whole bunch
of handy features that a typical calculator wouldn't have.

> To this day while writing code I will actually put pen to paper in order to
> check that my program is doing the correct calculations.

Pen and paper are not my things, but if I have to manually check
something, I'll do it. Usually with a REPL or something.

ChrisA