Show HN: Kalu – Calculator concept for long and inter-linked calculations

by chinchang • 11 years ago

17 18 11 years ago

This is a pretty cool idea.

One thing that would make it more useful to me, though much more difficult to implement, is that when you click a reused value, it store a reference to that result, so if you change the calculations for that result, all the references change also.

For example, that way I could have some initial parameters up top, and use those in a complicated calculation, with the end result changing if I change those parameters.

TTPrograms• 11 years ago

Bingo. Then add plotting functionality for ranges of those values.

foxbarrington• 11 years ago

Pretty neat.

Curious if it's out of score or valuable to make the output/input behave more like a variable than copy/paste? e.g. line 1 is "2 + 3", so you click on the result, "5" and you use that in a new expression: "5 + 20". However, if you go and change the original line to "7 + 3" the second expression could update to "10 + 20"

robotmlg• 11 years ago

This was the first thing I tested, and I think it would be extremely valuable if results could propagate through future equations like this. Change the one at the top and everything below updates.

chinchang5• 11 years ago

Yes, I thought about that. The issue lies just in UX. Some people could want to copy-paste value without propagation and other with propagation. How does the app enable both things in the best way is the question. Just a thought: Cmd+Click?

onaclov2000• 11 years ago

I like it, I'm taking the AI for Robotics class on Udacity, and I have a chromebook as my primary machine, I'm going to bookmark this and likely use it most of the time. Does it support math functions like power, exponential, etc? and how?

chinchang5• 11 years ago

Yes, it does. Actually any JavaScript works. So you can do Math.pow, Math.sin etc etc

pavlov• 11 years ago

The name means "dick" in Finnish. Oh well, there are thousands of languages spoken in the world, can't check them all!

...Actually, that would be a damn useful site: doesthiswordmeansomethingdirtyinanobscurelanguage.com

azeirah• 11 years ago

Build it now.

nvader• 11 years ago

I'm rather surprised that doesn't exist already, actually.

knd775• 11 years ago

I really like this. The only issue that I found in my short time playing with it is that a/0 returns infinity rather than undefined. 0/0 does return NaN, though.

jPaolantonio• 11 years ago

Reminds me of http://tydligapp.com/ . I always thought it would make a great desktop app.

lunixbochs• 11 years ago

Calca has served me pretty well on the desktop: http://calca.io

chinchang5• 11 years ago

Time to get it on the web for everyone and not just iOS users :)

dugmartin• 11 years ago

@chinchang: If you replace the eval() with math.eval from http://mathjs.org/ here

    result = eval(match[1]);

You'll get access to many more functions, including unit conversions.

chinchang5• 11 years ago

That thing is awesome! Thank you so much for the link :) I'll look into it.

linksbro• 11 years ago

"keep writing your calculations in JavaScript"

None of the Math.x functions work, e.g. Math.floor(2.5). Defining functions also doesn't work.

Looks promising though, I would use it for scratching project euler problems.

chinchang5• 11 years ago

Tried your example: Math.floor(2.5). Seems to be working on Chrome. Which browser are you using?

Show HN: Kalu – Calculator concept for long and inter-linked calculations

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