this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Calculatable (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] merc 103 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Calculators just have a bad user interface in general. It's pretty amazing that the UI was established in 1970 and was never changed after that.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

ah yes, wait until you find out about the qwerty keyboard. Or better yet, the fucking ABCDE layout for some godforsaken reason.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

In defence of QWERTY, it did a decent job for what it was designed for (reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time), but really oughtn't have lasted past the point where the risk of jamming was not longer there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I think people exaggerate how bad QWERTY is. Studies have not consistently found an advantage for one keyboard layout over another, and some studies even show that typists can reach equivalent speeds even with randomised layouts. This suggests that experience and practice with a particular layout is far more important to typing speed than the particular placement of letters. Which is a good argument for keeping qwerty around.

(reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time),

This story is quite common but there is little evidence that it's actually true. The designer of qwerty actually made a late adjustment to move R next to E (swapping it with period), even though ER is the second most common letter combination in English.

[–] piccolo 5 points 3 weeks ago

Even the keyboard design itself can effect typing results. Like typing on a really good mechanical keyboard is more comfortable than a shitty chiclet keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

there are two big arguments for a denser layout, notably you move your hands less, which means you can type faster, statistically speaking. It makes it easier. Generally you see typing speed track roughly with this over time.

And since you move your hands less, it's ergonomically better for typing, so you get less strain, you have better ergonomics in general, you can type longer, and even faster since there is less strain.

Different layouts optimize for different things, some optimize for efficient roll combinations, some optimize for switching between hands as optimally as possible. Some don't really do any of that (qwerty) which also have a significant impact on typing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Layout isn't really about speed, it's about comfort
I've been using modified colemak for like a year now and good lord it's so much nicer to use: you just place your fingers on "arst neio" in my case and then 80% of the keys you actually use on a regular basis are within a tiny finger movement to reach.
And then there's the fact that you're almost always using a different finger for the next letter, suuuper smooth typing experience.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I originally learned qwerty and touch typed at 60WPM, during a really boring job before smartphones and before we had internet to the desktop at work and I entertained myself learning to type again, but on dvorak

So after 3 months I was back to 60WPM

I really like that dvorak has all the vowels on the left of the home row, and t and h are on the right of the home row right where finger tapping cadence works for "th"

So my speed hasn't increased, but my fingers don't need to move as much for common words. I don't think it's worth it if you play games on the computer, many games don't map keyboard controls well. Eg Minecraft moves everything to whatever key is in the same place as the qwerty key; 7 days to die doesn't change anything, so you need to choose keys for everything, or if you're happy with the defaults, just change the ones that conflict when you fix "wasd" to ",aoe"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, they've sold the same product for about the same price since 1970, so it makes sense. I have no idea how schools can require a specific device from a specific manufacturer. It's just straight up market control by a public entity.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Its to make sure that they don't get a billion questions about what button to push next and not being able to complete homework because of button confusion. Does it still need to exist today? Probably no but good luck getting rid of a standard adopted by all manufacturers of textbooks.

[–] piccolo 4 points 3 weeks ago

The solution is mandate standards to be adhere too and any contractors must have no patents so any manufacturer can be used.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Curious to know why ? Basic functionality seems very obvious and friendly to me.

[–] captain_aggravated 16 points 3 weeks ago

If there is any nuance beyond a 4-function calculator with a single clear button, any nuance or deviation from any kind of standard will not be clearly explained.

There's never a backspace key, only two "clear" buttons that have nuance between them and little to no description as to which does what.

[–] merc 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn't useful if you're doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don't. There's a "C/CE" but there isn't a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there's no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you're using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It's pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you're out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it's a UI issue that you can't just say "hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

basically: calculators should be like old digital typewriters, ideally with an easy to use scripting language built in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

But it has been changed a lot?

The most basic immediate execution four operation calculator might still look the same, but that's because it's a very simple thing and you can't really get much wrong. For scientific calculators the UI has changed lots. As have the requirements. It used to be a specialist tool used to do thousands of calculations daily. An expensive thing that had to earn its keep. RPN and stuff like that made sense for people who could easily get back weeks of training in just a few years of being slightly more efficient while working. Now we have the natural order delayed execution thing, because the calculators are mostly for students. Who need the UI to be as easy to grasp as possible, because they won't ever have to do enough calculations to benefit from a faster but harder UI. That doesn't mean any of those approaches to UI is better or worse. Some things require instructions and making everything idiot-proof shouldn't ever be the ultimate goal (check out modern computing for why!).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

(check out modern computing for why!)

Because when you need to do a process a thousand times, you program it in an actual computer. Then you just have a specific interface for just your process that makes everything simple.

And the developer really only needs to understand the process for a couple months. Once it's confirmed working correctly, you're generally done with that piece of code.