calc.exe is now open source; there's surprising depth in its ancient code
Microsoft's embrace and adoption of open source software has continued with the surprising decision to publish the code for Windows Calculator and release it on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.
The repository shows Calculator's surprisingly long history. Although it is in some regards one of the most modern Windows applications—it's an early adopter of Fluent Design and has been used to showcase a number of design elements—core parts of the codebase date all the way back to 1995.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @07:58AM (2 children)
Pick some free software for statistics and your students will also learn a useful tool that they might use for their thesis or later professionally. Perhaps PSPP? (not to be confused with SPSS)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSPP [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:25AM (1 child)
Yes, I thought someone would suggest this. We're talking about 300 first-year university people (ie just out of high school ,"Is-this-going-to-be-on-the-test?" students) who have a hard time pressing buttons in the correct order - getting them to download some overkill stats package would just create more problems.
"Move your mouse to the Start box, click the left button. Type "calc" and click ..." - this is the level of detail needed to reach the lowest common denominator - sad face.
You are imagining a room full of engaged, curious people, turned-on by learning. I often dream of this room too.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 11 2019, @01:14PM
At my office, with people of similar intelligence (or lack thereof), we do this sort of thing with Excel. Perhaps that would work? I wouldn't be surprised if many people around here don't even know that Windows Calculator exists....
If they don't have Excel, tell 'em to get LibreOffice. If they can't figure that out, send 'em to a computer lab.