While the world builds AI Agents, I'm just building calculators
22 comments
·February 22, 2025bityard
If you're taking suggestions, I have a frequent need to do basic arithmetic on fractions and not many "app" calculators do that well or at all.
akkartik
This is very different, but check out my https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/notebook.love
stanleykm
One calculator I’ve come to love over the years is Numi. I keep it open all day every day and it does a pretty good job of bridging the gap between the typical skewmorphic calculator app and scilab or python. It’s a text based calculator that allows you to declare variables and do unit and base conversions and save and load your work. No graphing though unfortunately and i dont think it really has much in the way of plugin support.
Anyway not to say your calculators arent useful op, i just think that something that can be open on the desktop is more useful than something that is hidden in a chrome browser tab.
redbell
Somehow related: “A calculator app? Anyone could make that”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953
4887d30omd8
You're not the only one. I recently took up running and didn't particularly like any of the existing running pace calculators, so I made my own: https://calcubest.com/health/runningpace
And then kinda realized that there were others I wanted to have, and a few I thought others might want, so I added more.
A calculator is simple enough that it's fun to work on one when I need a break from something more complex but want to be able to do something other than doom scrolling. So now every couple of weeks I add another one.
jrockway
I like `units` for unit conversion. It's in the default install of MacOS, so readily accessible for most people.
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kstrauser
Where’s the math actually done, on device or on your server?
Feedback: the compound interest calculator doesn’t support continual compounding? That’s surprising, and also the easiest to compute.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
I must admit I still don't understand continual compounding
kstrauser
Imagine that instead of compounding the interest every day, you wanted to calculate it every nanosecond. And then, every billionth of a nanosecond. If you keep dividing that until it’s an infinite number of infinitely small compounding, you get a super simple equation:
interest = e^(years*rate)
e^(5*.1) = 1.649
e^(8*.03) = 1.271
afthonos
Sibling’s explanation is a great starting point! If you understand annual, weekly, and daily compounding, continuous compounding is the limit of what happens when the time you compound over becomes ever shorter. It’s not obvious without calculus, but it’s a well-defined function.
Xelynega
Explained in a terrible way, it's integrals for interest if "compound daily/monthly/yearly" was an estimation using discrete intervals
skeeter2020
you didn't really improve by hiding behind "integrals"; this is why so many kids are afraid of calculus.
myles-hn
Same. But mine was an android app. github.com/crouther
fithisux
While the world does AI I learn assembly
adi_hn07
Really! Is it part of your profession or study?
fithisux
Hobby, I am a data engineer and definitely I will need to encounter AI. But assembly gives a different perspective of machines, make my brain hard-working and in case of societal collapse you need an assembler. We need more assemblers more cross-platform frameworks (collections of macros) and more emphasis on the way things work, like guides, articles. Not less.
adi_hn07
What a coincidence, I used to be a data engineer too! Then I switched to building websites with NextJS. Totally agree with your point, I feel the same reasoning applies to higher level coding too, the best AI coding agents out there are at most a force multiplier, which means knowing how to code has even more leverage in the age of AI, allowing one person to do the work of an entire team.
adi_hn07
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On the topic of calculators. I discovered Figr[1] on HN a while ago, and it really helps when doing one off multi variable thing, like helping a customer estimate their bill etc.
Kudos on building this. I occasionally search for these on Google and am always disappointed by the mess. Bookmarked.
[1] https://www.figr.app/