[perth]

TBH TI-89 titanium is a better engineering calculator since the UI is way better. I have both a HP50G and a TI-89 titanium and I've done way more useful engineering work on the TI-89 titanium just because it's so much easier and accessible. Also of course, BASIC is a lot easier than reverse polish lisp for making some quick scripts.

Also I will add, there are known symbolic math issues on the HP50G due to the CAS system it uses. I will see if I can find a link.

[hggigg]

I've used both extensively. I disagree with this. I dislike the HP48 series but I dislike the TI89 more. It's probably because most people don't understand how to use the 50G properly. You really need to go through the HP training video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTPruRVV-e8 ). Incidentally if you haven't watched that it's worth watching on its own - great production! In an engineering context, the 48-series was designed to produce small composable reusable programs and tools in the file tree which can be executed quickly.

Try a quick EE example for parallel resistor calculation that takes 2 and puts 1 value back on stack

<< 1/X SWAP 1/X + 1/X >>

Store that in RPAR in whatever directory you want or HOME. Then you whack in 2 resistors and hit the RPAR F-key. There is nothing faster or more efficient than that.

I still use a 15C all the time though. Even easier! 99% of what I do is on paper though and ends up getting chucked in the numeric solver.

[Aardwolf]

For something that requires writing BASIC (or RPL for that matter), I think I'd rather use a programming language on a PC

However, keystroke programming a calculator, where you can still somewhat do simple loops with goto-like constructs when needed, strikes the right balance for the limited UI of a calculator

So something like the HP 15C is nice.

[snvzz]

Got both as well (TI-89v2 and hp50g).

TI-89 preferred by far. hp50g UX is bad, particularly the latency makes me sick.

[nxobject]

Somehow the TI-89 had _both_ snappiness and relatively advanced 2D math display.

The TI Nspire CAS is the pinnacle of calculator UX, though - crisp , large, and hi-density LCD, beautiful math formatting, and dedicated alpha keys. I’d rather be doing symbolic stuff with that. In college physics it saved my ass by doing unit analysis on my answers as a double-check, converting units to base SI units and then doing as much simplification as possible.