Jason Brennan Interviews Calca Developer Frank Krueger

Frank Krueger:

So I’ve always had these text file “derivations”. But it’s a terrible system: Sometimes I actually needed to do some arithmetic that I couldn’t do in my head. So I would switch to Mac’s Calculator app, or query Wolfram Alpha or use Soulver, and then switch back to my text file and plug the results in. Also, because Copy & Paste were my main tools for doing algebra, I was always suspicious of my own work.

So Calca, you could say, came about all at once as the realization that I should just write a smarter text editor to handle these files I was creating - one that knew arithmetic and algebra, had features from the programming IDEs I use every day, but still tried its best to stay out of your way (programming IDEs are often too rigid to explore ideas.)

Great interview.

★ Friday, 26 July 2013