Show HN: NaSC – Do maths like a normal person | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: NaSC – Do maths like a normal person

parnold-x.github.io

127 pointsmacco24 comments

I usually don’t like to link to competing projects, but this seems to be only for Linux so I think I can link a similar one (as far as I can understand from the screenshots) for OS X and iOS: http://acqualia.com/soulver/

Looks like a close copy of Soulver to me. I think in this case it's worth mentioning.

Ever since I first saw Soulver I have been eagerly awaiting a Windows alternative. Maybe with NaSC we're just a little closer.

There is OpalCalc for Windows: http://www.skytopia.com/software/opalcalc/

This was the first tool I thought of when I saw this. They actually look similar, too.

looks interesting, I wonder if it can be ported to Windows, where I have to spend my working life :-(. For something even more sophisticated and Mathcad-like take a look at SMath Studio: http://en.smath.info/, unfortunately only free as in beer.

I use something like speedcrunch. http://speedcrunch.blogspot.com.au/ Runs cross platform.

Also wanted more algebraic like wolfram alpha capability though.

Also, Numi http://numi.io/

There's also Calca which runs on Windows, Mac and iOS:

http://calca.io/

Simply beautiful, beautifully simple idea. Takes the best of two worlds: paper and calculator.

Somehow reminds me http://strlen.com/treesheets/ I was also impressed by the creative approach to the centuries-old task.

Would be great if that had a mobile version and synced.

It's coded in Vala.

Source code: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~nasc-team/nasc/trunk/files/74

I hadn't seen Vala before - now I'm really interested. Thanks for mentioning this.

Brett Victor's reactive documents http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/, may not be seminal but good nevertheless.

It should be noted that this kind of thing has been available in Mathematica, ipython etc. for literally decades.

Not that the tool is not great, it is.

Mathematica is not free and iPython is not as straightforward to use.

Seems like either a direct copy of or bizarrely coincidental convention with the Mac/iPhone Soulver

I have been looking for something like this for a while, I find software calculators to be woefully inadequate for anything beyond the most basic math. Will definitely check this out!

Neat. I'm a regular Sage user, and this seems to be an interesting tool for when I don't require the full power of that tool and just need to make some quick calculations.

Apropos nothing: I'd really like an alternative to Sage for light linear algebra work. In particular, I'm not in love with the way Sage interacts with Python.

GNU Octave [1] which is pretty much a Matlab clone. I find the Matlab syntax easy enough for linear algebra.

[1] https://gnu.org/software/octave/

I don't have ubuntu bzr, is there a way for me to get the source code?

You can browse it on-line: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~nasc-team/nasc/trunk/files

Other than that, looks like you'll need bzr to pull/clone.

How exactly do non-normal folk do math? am i missing something?

looks neat :-) but is there any chance of a ppa for vivid?

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