Study was in calculators, yeah. https://vdocuments.mx/electronic-calculators-which-notation-is-the-better.html
Can't argue that long equations are hard to read. The question is which is harder. A slew of parenthesis makes a mess that's difficult to detangle. Practice is a strange thing…I picked it up in under 90 seconds and it made immediate sense (I even tried doing algebraic proofs in it—which required me to invent rules about how to handle that—and found a generalization of a prior simple proof by accident). I'm not much affected by pre-existing knowledge that way, though, which is a distinct habit I've trained in: familiarity with algebraic notation (like all familiarity) naturally causes a conflict where the brain assumes a new thing can be identified as like an old thing, which it is currently able to handle, and (greatly) reduce energy consumption by rejecting this new thing in favor of the old thing; I obsessively consume new knowledge and use prior knowledge to make it accessible by analogy. It does look like a bunch of garble, on the face, requiring intent to take a closer look. Familiarity is no small advantage, in many ways. Transitioning to Dvorak was way, way harder than RPN; as many others have noticed, reports of amazing speed gains have been overstated, but it's a lot more comfortable. This comes with the disadvantage that any keyboard shortcuts organized for spatial logical proximity are now scattered nonsense. The point is salient. On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 10:16 PM Christopher Barker <python...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Having both RPN and infix in one language seems like a verb as idea to me. > But anyway: > > > > On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 11:22 AM John <john.r.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> RPN is considered >> less prone to human error to begin with, with technical users >> approaching 4 times the error rate with infix, and non-technical users >> 1.5x the error rate with infix, > > > Those sound like results from a study of some sort, so I wonder about the > context. > > For me personally, I really loved RPN on my old HP calculators — particularly > the one with a multi line screen that could showy the stack. > > But that’s keying things into a calcular, where adding parens is a pain. > > When trying to read RPN, I really struggle. Granted, that may because I > haven’t practiced it hardly at all, but I’m not so sure. > > And the fact that most math instruction and use is done with infix and > parentheses makes a very strong case. > > Everyone is familiar with infix, hardly anyone is familiar with RPN. > > -CHB > >> Less useful on smaller equations, where algebraic is probably more >> appropriate just because people are used to algebraic: > > No small advantage. > > Frankly, putting long equations all in one line of code will always be hard > to read. > -- > Christopher Barker, PhD (Chris) > > Python Language Consulting > - Teaching > - Scientific Software Development > - Desktop GUI and Web Development > - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/D4VVAPOAGKPUKZ6W6R5PROHGQNCOMXXV/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
