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.
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Microsoft Open Sources its Windows Calculator
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:24PM (2 children)
Hmm, I wonder if the angle here has something to do with buying github.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:29AM (1 child)
For Calc.exe? That doesn't add up.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RandomFactor on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:40AM
It's a speculative execution.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:35PM
So it's not tight code but its UI style, a calculator of all thing.
BIG FUCKING DEAL.
If you want calculator design examples, look to old Casio scientific calculator, or HP calculators for its clean design with tank-like reliability.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday March 08 2019, @10:38PM (6 children)
I think this is something that the Linux desktop/apps/toolkits could learn from to provide a look-and-feel driven by UI/ergonomics design research. Microsoft seems to get (or have gotten) at least this much right and consistent by specifying implementable UI requirements/guidelines against clearly elaborated design principles.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 08 2019, @11:49PM (3 children)
Uh...until maybe 2012 I might have agreed with you but, um, where were you since before the launch of Windows 8?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday March 09 2019, @12:11AM (2 children)
And 10, Windows phone, Windows Server 2012 ... they look like they invested a lot of effort behind that awful interface to standardize it as consistently as they did over their whole product line. I frankly don't know if it was based on sound design principles, but if I had to guess, it was all marketing-driven. It also seems to dump accessibility in the trash. Some corporate/engineering-insider information would definitely be useful here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:51AM (1 child)
Actually, the Windows Phone UI is decent. It was just too bad they thought it was a good idea to put the same UI on the desktop where it Really Doesn't Belong(tm).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:37PM
Windows Phone had the best UI when it launched, but they shot themselves in both feet, then the kneecaps for good measure with so many shitty decisions, and only made it worse with each consecutive release. I absolutely loved WP7, even though there were no apps worth using in it's store, it was still great for phone-use - calling, texting, social media. WP8 destroyed all that with subtle changes, and it only got worse from there. Now I'm unhappily using lineageOS and will probably go to a old-school flip-phone/feature phone when this one bites the dust (probably from the non-replacable battery dying as screens seem to be more resilient and protectors/cases cheap and low-profile enough nowadays that it's no longer a choice of caution or comfort).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @07:51AM (1 child)
It's cute and good to have "UI guidelines" but it's silly to pretend there is only one desktop environment. Pick the best applications, nevermind the way they look...
GUN/Linux is not a monolithic entity or a walled garden. With freedom comes diversity.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 11 2019, @01:09PM
...and diversity is strength. Regardless of if the infection is a virus, a zero-day, or just stupid developers, it infects a much smaller portion of the population.
...until everyone jumped on that systemd garbage anyway...
(Score: 1) by patricepetticoat on Friday March 08 2019, @10:40PM (2 children)
Where the hell is the down vote button on this Subreddit?
Actually I was surprised to see the linked article was from Ars (which I like), but it was really short and didn't really do much other than tell me that Windows Calculator is now licensed under MIT.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday March 08 2019, @10:47PM
What more is there to say?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @10:56PM
Ars Technica is ... well it is what it is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Friday March 08 2019, @10:57PM (6 children)
So even the calculator collects telemetry data that it snitches back to Microsoft?
Anyway since it's just the Win10 version of Calc this just became a lot less interesting. Shouldn't they have a lot of older but still interesting legacy projects they could have released as open source instead if they actually wanted people to learn and help out. This seems to be, at best, some kind of tutorial in how to write a Win10 app.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday March 08 2019, @11:11PM (4 children)
I can't see why it wouldn't.
Even assuming they're 100% altruistic and only use the telemetry to improve the product (Hah!), a calculator is actually a quite sophisticated and widely-used tool of the sort that could be improved by an analysis of the exact usage patterns commonly seen.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:07AM
"You're doing what when you calculate sales tax?"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:26AM (2 children)
Hah!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday March 09 2019, @05:10AM (1 child)
Beats the heck out of an abacus or slide rule - and they got us to the moon.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:00AM
Yeah, right.
Marvel at the complexity of a (snitching) calculator application, while it runs on a computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:59AM
> So even the calculator collects telemetry data that it snitches back to Microsoft?
sure. After the pentium division fiasco each result of a division is sent back to a microsoft server farm, to be confirmed by an outsourced chinese worker (they don't trust microprocessors anymore).
Proof, China got an influx of capital and became a superpower right after the pentium FDIV bug.
(isn't AI great for extracting knowledge from the web)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TrentDavey on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:05AM (4 children)
/RANT
The Statistics functionality was taken out of the calculator in the leap to Windows 10 for some reason. This made me sad since I wrote easy instructions on how to get the Standard Deviation (or Error) of the Mean (easily had by dividing the Standard Deviation of the Population by sqrt(N)). It was nice since most students had Windows and thus one set of calculator instructions. I currently have dozens of instructions for all the variations of hand held calculators students own. They have to figure out (actually it's usually me) which variation they have and then consult my growing instruction booklet (they invariably no longer have the manual).
Why did Microsoft remove it? It's not like it would be taking up much room in the Windows installation.
RANT
(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.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:39AM
What irritated me is when, years ago, they added the different modes of operation (Scientific, Programmer, etc.) but when you did a calculation in one mode and switched to another mode, the answer on the screen was cleared. Previously I'm pretty sure you could calculate some value in hex for example and then apply a trigonometric function to it. Not anymore, at least without copying and pasting. Someone obviously thought the different modes would make it easier to use!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:07AM
well, arithmetic hasn't changed all that much since 1995.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:50AM (2 children)
Now that it's FOSS, for the love of god will someone better than me add RPN functionality.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:42AM (1 child)
Add a feature request. Or maybe someone else already did it; check the 1065 forks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Sunday March 10 2019, @01:19AM
Or download this online calculator maybe?
https://www.cfd-online.com/Tools/rpncalc.html [cfd-online.com]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Saturday March 09 2019, @05:43AM
Does it still not do proper order of operations in standard mode? I've always wondered about problems that's caused for people over the years who didn't notice. It my have been fixed years ago, I have no idea.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by turgid on Saturday March 09 2019, @11:11AM
Many years ago I started to write a GUI calculator using WINGs (the toolkit that WindowMaker comes with). As with everything else, life got in the way and I never finished it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].