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I always geek out showing others Numi: https://numi.app/
The ability to use variables in a calculator is exciting to me because it is so easy and because it helps lessen error.
I would be interested to see how the codebase itself changed over 30 years, using something like [1] "gource", but it predates a lot of version control systems :)
Also, I prefer the earlier UI designs that are more skeuomorphic and look like an actual calculator... but that's just me, they all look great.
[1] https://gource.io/
I have a program always open called pcalc as well, but it's something homebrew and short for Python calculator. It's just a Python repl (enhanced by python-prompt-toolkit) with a bunch of my own pre-defined functions: https://github.com/orlp/dotfiles/blob/master/pcalc/pcalc
I use it all the time, it's so incredibly useful. My most used pre-defined functions are... copy(s) and paste(). E.g. doubling a comma-separated list of numbers is one simple
copy(", ".join(x*2 for x in eval(paste())))
I used Mathpad for longer calculations, a bit of a niche application by Mark Widholm, which exists since System 7 or 8. It's a bit like Matlab, and also a bit like those apps where you write small steps and can track the computations (Soulver is one of those), but simpler and more direct than the former and much more capable than the latter.
For simple calculations, I used the standard calculator in "normal" mode. I've also always got one or two calculators on my desk (currently a NumWorks and an HP Prime). And since a few months, I also have Free42 on laptop and iPhone. If you like RPN, check it out: https://github.com/thomasokken/free42