Note by @fastfinge

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

You know you're a long-time #NVDA user when instead of opening a calculator app, you just open the NVDA Python console and solve your equation there. Is that just me? #NVDASR

Quin @TheQuinbox@dragonscave.space

@fastfinge Definitely not just you. I got quite some weird looks for this trick in school though.

Jage @Jage@mas.to

@fastfinge I use Calcute. Calculator meets Notepad.

David Goldfield @DavidGoldfield@tweesecake.social

@Jage @fastfinge Calcute is another program I hadn't heard of. Thanks for making me aware of it.

Jage @Jage@mas.to

@DavidGoldfield @fastfinge Has not been updated in ages, but still works. calcute.com

x0 @x0@dragonscave.space

@DavidGoldfield @Jage @fastfinge If you are really looking for something functional and have some technical knowhow, it's CLI though, check out calc, isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc. It's a C-style arbitrary precision calculator with absolutely gobs of functions, it's got readline for history, variables, the ability to define functions including in an rc-style file I think etc. Doesn't build natively on Windows, but you can build it in Cygwin.

Martin from Toronto @mcourcel@mstdn.ca

@Jage @fastfinge Ooo, this looks cool.

Kevin R Jones @kevinrj@mastodon.social

@fastfinge @jaybird110127 I've even written 600 math functions that I load into the python console on my mac :)

miki @miki@dragonscave.space

@fastfinge I've used this trick hundreds of times during my high-school years.

To the point of writing tiny programs to find/verify some complicated solution sometimes.

James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space

@fastfinge Nope. This is how I calculate my hours and invoice totals every month, among other things.

David Goldfield @DavidGoldfield@tweesecake.social

@fastfinge I'm a long-time NVDA user and, thannks to you, I was today years old when I learned that you could do this. Many thanks.

Patrick W @BrailleScreen@dragonscave.space

@DavidGoldfield @fastfinge Oh hey, since you're here, you can also play with something like:

import tones
tones.beep(500, 500)

Simon Jaeger @simon@procrastodon.net

@fastfinge Nope. I hate the Windows 10 calculator app. no idea if it's better in 11, but the 10 vbersion loses focus all the time and seems to lack basic order of operations, so I gave up on it. Also just being able to save variables easily and then add those variables is really useful sometimes when I'm crunching numbers.

James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space

@simon @fastfinge If you're not already aware, here's a tip: in both the NVDA Python console and a regular Python REPL, the variable named with a single underscore (_) always holds the result/return value of the most recently executed statement. Really useful when you know you'll need to use a value in the next step of a calculation but don't want to have to think of a name for it.

Simon Jaeger @simon@procrastodon.net

@jscholes @fastfinge I always forget that. That does save me a lot of typing. Thanks.

Steve @sclower@mastodon.cloud

@fastfinge I don't use the NVDA Python console, but I will open a repl of some kind for simple calculations. Either Python or Node, depending on the environment I'm in at the time.

Tyler Spivey @tspivey@dragonscave.space

@fastfinge Nope. You've got variables and your session will last as long as NVDA does. You can also hide the window so it gets out of the way.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@tspivey Yup. And it's way easier to copy results than it is running Python directly on the command line. Just press f6.