Friday, March 21, 2008

Programmer's Calculator Google Gadget

Sometimes when I run into a coding problem in the middle of a programming project, I create a new separate file to experiment and test theoretical solutions instead of messing around with the larger project that I'm working on. I usually prefer to use JavaScript as a experimenting language because:

  • JavaScript is fast and easy to write and test.
  • It's an interpreted language so no recompiling is needed.
  • It's readily available and standard in all modern web browsers.
  • It provides a basic, but fairly good set of features that can usually be easily retranslated later to other more powerful languages.
  • It is fairly easy to debug (especially with the Javascript error console in Mozilla/Firefox browsers).
This programmer's calculator began as just that: a experimental JavaScript web page that I whipped up to test base conversions. I realized afterwards however, that there could perhaps be some practical future use...

Many programmer's calculators out there currently only handle one base at a time, and simply don't provide certain conversions such as ASCII/Unicode characters or RGB which are easy enough to implement. Also, a good amount of code in typical calculator applets/gadgets is usually dedicated to having pretty graphical user interface which frankly I think is usually entirely unnecessary for computer-based calculator applets. (You do have a real keyboard in front of you already, don't you?) For serious programming, the leaner and meaner it is, the better.

So without further ado, here it is:

Description: A programmer's calculator featuring multiple simultaneous conversions and common operations. Instantly converts between decimal, hexadecimal, binary, octal/any base between 2-36, character codes, and 24/48 bit RGB. Operations supported include Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and bitwise NOT, AND, OR, XOR.


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