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SpeedCrunch 1.1

https://www.speedcrunch.org/
228LordNibbler | | 52 | HN
Gormo | parent | next
I've been using it for years and was surprised to see a new version after a dacade.

After installing it, I was surprised to see that the immediate changes most noticeable to me were that the input box was unnecessarily doubled in size, enclosed in an unnecessary border, and surrounded by unnecessary dead space; and that there's now marked input lag that never existed in the original version.

I never had a single problem with 0.12 over the past ten years, and use it nearly every day -- no bugs, no missing features.

I appreciate the desire to improve and innovate, but you know, sometimes, software really is finished.

academicfish | parent | next
Personally, I like it. And there's also an option to go back to classic view for some things.
KetoManx64 | root | parent
Does it fix the input lag?
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stormking | parent | next
I like the UI changers. But how do I select a different font?
qwertox | root | parent
Settings > Appearance > Input and Results > Font...
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electroglyph | parent | next
same, not a fan of the new icon tbh
andix | root | parent
I'm also not a fan of the old one. I've always changed the icon to the system calculator icon.
eviks | parent
> sometimes, software really is finished.

That's never the case for any consumer app, the potential for improvement in UI is practically infinite. But also, just use the old version if it's finished, you don't need to upgrade?

(this app has plenty of bugs / missing issues just like everything else, for example, blurry text on some platforms)

Gormo | root | parent
> That's never the case for any consumer app, the potential for improvement in UI is practically infinite.

If that's true, how do you explain the observable pattern of many consumer applications degrading in UI functionality and coherence after a certain point?

> But also, just use the old version if it's finished, you don't need to upgrade?

Exactly. I reverted to 0.12.

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jstummbillig | root | parent | next
> If that's true, how do you explain the observable pattern of many consumer applications degrading in UI functionality and coherence after a certain point?

Well, that's easy: Bad choices. The better something is, the easier it is to change it in a way, that makes it worse.

I agree with GP, everything can be improved, but that doesn't mean that you will succeed, or that you should try, for various, separate reasons.

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wiz21c | parent | next
I use https://qalculate.github.io/news.html a lot. The UI is not exceptional but it's very powerful (I'm a former SpeedCrunch user)
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jiehong | parent | next
List of changes for this calculator [0].

I used to use it quite a bit, but I now gravitate towards numbat instead [1].

[0]: https://www.speedcrunch.org/download.html

[1]: https://github.com/sharkdp/numbat

terlisimo | parent | next
speedcrunch is wonderful but I had this pet peeve with it where it had a hardcoded limit of 5 digits before it drops to scientific notation. Not very useful for shell scripts and programming.

I opened an issue while it was on bitbucket, but the response was something "yeah, that's intentional".

I see they bumped it to 14 digits now.

for years I've had a custom build of it with

src/math/hmath.cpp:

- if (expd > 5) + if (expd > 25)

blessed be the open source!

nicexe | parent | next
I know I'm not in their user demographic but I just use an interactive python shell. This means that I sometimes have to hack something quick and dirty to get some functionality that isn't quite native or I have to import a package/library that does the job. (some examples are grouping bits, coloring by order of magnitude, casting between types or encoding/decoding/serializing/deserializing values)
unanimous | parent | next
This is nice to see, and it looks like this release (and maybe some earlier ones?) includes a small order of operations bug fix that hadn't been released for a long time. 1/2(-9.8) now equals -4.9 rather than -0.05102040816326530612. I like how the expression also renders with a multiplication symbol to clarify: 1 / 2 × (−9.8)
Jaxkr | parent | next
This is such an ambiguous formula. It reminds me of those order-of-operations social media engagement baits.
dataflow | parent | next
> 1/2(-9.8) now equals -4.9 rather than -0.05102040816326530612

That should really be an error.

simsla | root | parent | next
Order of operations is clear. Division and multiplication have the same order and are evaluated left to right.

-4.9 is unequivocally correct.

dataflow | root | parent
Yes, thank you, I passed elementary school. Mathematical correctness is not the sole criterion that matters in this world.
3eb7988a1663 | root | parent | next
Especially for a deterministic tool like this. Do what I say, not what I mean. I want no helpful cleverness that resulted in this bug in the first place.
| root | parent | next
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| root | parent | next
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andix | parent | next
I'm using it for a long time already. 1.0 and 1.1 are the first updates after 10 years now?
sammy2255 | parent | next
Love speedcrunch it has been sitting on my taskbar for many years always my go-to for quick scratchpad for equations, etc.
dang | parent | next
Related:

SpeedCrunch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661485 - Dec 2021 (131 comments)

Speedcrunch (calculator) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460520 - Feb 2009 (2 comments)

faldor20 | parent | next
I used to be a speedcrunch user and it was my introduction to "good calculator apps" However after surveying the options a while back I switched to numbat. The main advantage is that it's easy to define your own units on the fly.

A huge amount of simple calculation errors can be avoided by just using units.

eahm | parent | next
I install Qalculate on every machine I own, even the Windows ones, so for the calc pros in here: which one is better? Thanks.
cs3f16 | parent | next
I'm thinking of creating a calculator combining giac/Xcas with numbat for units.
caterama | parent | next
Huge fan of SpeedCrunch!! Was sad to see the formula was somewhat recently disabled on brew: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/speedcrunch ... anyone know if this means it could be re-enabled?
triilman | parent | next
Just try this one. There will be some big update from the developer.

https://antovsky.itch.io/naut

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Surac | parent | next
to bad all functions dealing with prims are missing. isPrime, nextPrime, factorize prime factors
fittingopposite | parent | next
What's the best scientific calculator for Android?
CarlJW | parent | next
I absolutely love NerdCalci! It's simple and gives the same line by line file-based format.

https://github.com/vishaltelangre/NerdCalci

Also on windows I used to use SpeQ.

kstrauser | parent | next
For people who’ve used both: how’s it compare to Soulver?
andix | parent
Probably not what you want to hear: SpeedCrunch is free and not macOS only ;)
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bugake | parent | next
Why do you do this when you have Pari GP?
borner791 | parent | next
Amazing! This is the most useful calculator.. bit shifts..radix conversations...

I've been using it for years after struggling missing the windows 2000 calculator.

benmac06 | parent | next
Speedcrunch might finally beat out opening a terminal w/ the R interpreter for me
smusamashah | parent | next
I recently opened a github issue about the system UI looking dark. I got a response an hour later which appears to be AI written, I responded to it and it looks like my request has been accepted.

I absolutely do not mind it being AI driven. I have not seen this before in this. The response was not slop, just very formal and verbose.

I use speed crunch almost every day mostly to see bits and bit shift operations visually. It's just strange to see requesting feature, getting an automated further inquiry, and then a response that yeah that sounds good to do.

weird-eye-issue | parent
> I absolutely do not mind it being AI driven

Why do you think it was AI driven? It was more than likely human driven, but largely written by an AI to save time.

amelius | parent
I also recently made a fairly complete scientific calculator. I first asked Claude what functions it would put in it, then I made some modifications (added complex numbers), and told it to write the calculator. It looked perfect in one shot. This is really how simple this kind of thing has become.
girvo | parent
Scientific calculators are surprisingly hard to get right. SpeedCrunch itself just fixed some calculation errors (usually its order of operations based, but not always). I’d be interested to see how accurate yours is, though I also wonder if there are lower level libraries to leverage to make it a moot point