A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
CE is Clear Entry. If you want to hit 2 x 4, but accidentally press 2 x 44, you can press the CE button before pressing = to clear the 44 but not the "2 x" part.
C will clear all of it so you can start over at the beginning.
Pressing CE twice may or may not clear entries in reverse order, depending on you calculator model.
So you're saying mash both a bunch of times to be super sure?
Calculators are similar to a Dark Souls game. You always restart from the beginning.
Calculators are similar to a Dark Souls game.
If that were true then mashing buttons on your calculator would prevent any inputs from being processed for a few seconds.
Fromsoft believes in punishing button-mashers.
Unless it's Dark Souls 2 wherein you mash a couple buttons after being knocked down or rolling and manage to queue up your binoculars perfectly. This, in turn, allows you to get a really splendid look at your enemy's grimacing face as he shoves a rather vicious and often seriously pointy metal object up your ass. All the while you're frantically trying to roll away and accidentally toss back a flask. This manages to save you from an untimely demise until you notice that you backed up a little too much and that dude waiting to ambush took one last drag from his cigarette, flicked it away, and proceeded to club your head like he was Babe Ruth after a particularly hearty breakfast.
Then on the way back to your souls some asshole named "Forsworn" gets in your way. God only knows what his problem is.
Problem is on some calculators C is clear all and CE is clear entry, on some C is clear entry and AC is clear all, and some have a C/AC or CE/C button where it’s press once to clear entry and press twice to clear all.
So it’s safest to mash unless you really know your calculator, because the industry can’t get its shit together, and that’s the sole reason it died (I’m assuming.)
Why didn't they just make one Clear and make another Backspace? The concept of erasing the last character had been in typewriters for a while by then, and this is far more obvious. Maybe erasing a single digit in earlier software/hardware was much harder than just clearing it all?
Some do that, too. Unfortunately the weight of tradition seems to enforce the C/CE/AC key preference.
Even the iphone built in OS calculator has the “AC” button unless you manually tap the entry window, then you get a backspace.
That's why it never worked for me. I assumed CE was Clear Everything.
Should be replaced with a backspace icon and a trash can icon
You mean CE doesnt stand for "clear everything"? And here I thought more letters meant more clearing.
It's solar powered so I just wait for night time to clear it then do the next problem in the morning
Mate, you can just put your finger over the solar panel until it slowly gets strangled
edging the calcy
Now we know the C stands for Cum and CE for Cum Edging
What are you, my local DMV?
I discovered that hitting something like C, CE and 0 simultaneously for some reason worked as an instant power off for my school calculator. Do calculators have such hidden off-buttons? Because I have discovered other calculators with other combinations.
Calculators just have a bad user interface in general. It's pretty amazing that the UI was established in 1970 and was never changed after that.
ah yes, wait until you find out about the qwerty keyboard. Or better yet, the fucking ABCDE layout for some godforsaken reason.
In defence of QWERTY, it did a decent job for what it was designed for (reducing the risk of mechanical typewriters jamming by not having two hammers next to each other be pressed at the same time), but really oughtn't have lasted past the point where the risk of jamming was not longer there.
Well, they've sold the same product for about the same price since 1970, so it makes sense. I have no idea how schools can require a specific device from a specific manufacturer. It's just straight up market control by a public entity.
Its to make sure that they don't get a billion questions about what button to push next and not being able to complete homework because of button confusion. Does it still need to exist today? Probably no but good luck getting rid of a standard adopted by all manufacturers of textbooks.
Curious to know why ? Basic functionality seems very obvious and friendly to me.
If there is any nuance beyond a 4-function calculator with a single clear button, any nuance or deviation from any kind of standard will not be clearly explained.
There's never a backspace key, only two "clear" buttons that have nuance between them and little to no description as to which does what.
For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn't useful if you're doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don't. There's a "C/CE" but there isn't a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there's no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you're using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It's pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you're out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it's a UI issue that you can't just say "hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it".
Press both simultaneously, while twisting the joystick in a "C" motion, to launch a fireball.
That's ki, not fire. 🤓
There sure is a lot of overlap with people criticizing the technical interface of a calculator and nerds, wonder why that is? Oh well glad I’m not one of those nerds, now back to the clear button being so obtuse.
Same energy as me holding Ctrl and pressing S seven times just to make sure.
I don't think anyone's ever been punished for saving twice. Right?
This is where people give me examples where people have been prove me wrong. Please I want to know the sadness of others sadness give give sadness. Give give now sadness give
Once I was working on some music and got so excited about how it turned out I hit ctrl S like 5 times, it corrupted the project and I lost it 😭
The calculator on my phone has an "AC" button, further confusing the situation.
That's so you can run it off the mains.
Software engineer: just turn it off and on again.
docker system prune -a
docker compose up —build
Clearly nobody here does any serious calculator based math
Let's be honest, if you are doing serious math, you'll have a graphing calculator to do way more stuff, and the controls are much more like a mini computer (with a backspace key, and being able to delete individual lines of history, or all of the history with menus)
Not if ur university has dumb rules about what calculator u can us in exams.
RPN gang!
huhuhuhh, i do thaaat.
I actually did laugh out loud at this though.