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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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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
(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?