Alternatives
Products that do what I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator does
https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth Hi HN! For the past year I've been getting into programming in Z80 assembly (especially for the TI-84+). More recently I've been learning about the Forth programming language and after a lot of searching online (in vain) for a Forth interpreter for the TI-84, I decided to write one myself. It's been fun demoing this to others, because it's a very unexpected use of a calculator. It's my largest project to date, and I'm interested to know what the HN community thinks, please feel free to critique my code! -- Ben
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https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80 As a successor to my previous project[1], a Forth interpreter that runs under the TI operating system, I decided to go all the way and write my own assembler and OS. This is a project I've been working on for just over a month, but there's still a long way to go. The idea is to have a kernel + the Forth interpreter and compiler, then users can modify how their operating system works through the Forth files. My Forth implementation is mostly ANS-standard conforming, so most code should work right out of the box without any problem. See…
2019
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Quick background: I used to code. Studied it in school, wrote some projects, but eventually convinced myself I wasn't cut out for it. Too slow, too many bugs, imposter syndrome — the usual story. So I pivoted, ended up as an investment associate at an early-stage angel fund, and haven't written real code in years. Fast forward to now. I'm a Buffett nerd — big believer in compound interest as a mental model for life. I run compound interest calculations constantly. Not because I need to, but because watching numbers grow over 30-40 years keeps me patient when markets get wild. It's basically…
Jan 2026 · calquio.com
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A new calculator software cannot really bring attention (https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/) However, I wrote a full article explaining why I had to build something "new" that does not behave like usual desktop calculator softwares : TL;DR All "small" calculator softwares I know share the same design flaws. And the GUI is not the only stumbling block in their poor efficiency. Handling correctly numerical approximations - expected or not - is crucial to trust the results. It is usually not done in lightweight tools. It should. So I prove that if I could do it, OS manufacturers…
2022
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You know that old TI calculator you used in high school, then put in a box and forgot about? Have you ever wished you had an operating system for your calculator with preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory management, a tree filesystem conforming to the FHS, and all the comforts of Unix? Well, good news: that's totally a thing that exists. I've been working on my kernel for about three and a half years now and I'm looking for new contributors to help out. It's written entirely in z80 assembly, and it's both challenging and fun to work on. There's an IRC channel for contributors or people…
2014
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2021 · mkhan45.github.io
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The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca
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I figured I needed to work on my coding skills before building the next groundbreaking AI app, so I started working on this free tool site. Its basically just an aggregation of various commonly used calculators and unit convertors. Link: https://www.calcverse.live Tech Stack: Next, React, Typescript, shadcn UI, Tailwind CSS Would greatly appreciate your feedback on the UI/UX and accessibilty. I struggled the most with navigation. I've added a search box, a sidebar, breadcrumbs and pages with grids of cards leading to the respective calculator or unit convertor, but not sure if…
2025 · calcverse.live
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2016 · knightos.org
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2019 · github.com
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Hey, maker here. After launching a daily word search game, I randomly thought of this math game while driving. Finally got around to making it and I think it turned out pretty cool. It’s a math search game that’s meant to help you practice your quick addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills. I’m hoping it’ll help people (even those like me who aren’t big on math) learn and increase their speeds. (There are also some settings you can enable to make the game harder) If you try it out, please let me know if you found it fun, if you have anything you’d like me to add, or if you…
2024 · worchle.com
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I built a browser-based TI-84 calculator that works without installation or login. It's useful for students who don’t have the physical calculator or just need a quick way to check something. Would love feedback or suggestions!
2025 · ti84-online.com
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Wrote this to learn more about the `chumsky` parser combinator library, rustyline, and the `ariadne` error reporting crate. Such a nice DX combo for writing new languages. Still a work in progress, but I thought I'd share :)
2025 · github.com
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2021 · github.com
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I’ve always found that online calculators tend to have bad UIs, especially on mobile. Most of the calculator websites I’ve come across use outdated and inconvenient ways of inputting data, or they format the results in confusing ways. I’ve noticed that fraction calculators (especially mixed fractions) are terrible to use, even on desktop. I haven’t built one of those yet, but it’s something I’m planning to tackle soon. This is a project I’ve always wanted to work on, but I’m relatively new to this space. So far, I’ve created a collection of simple calculators focused on math and finance. I’d…
2025
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Hi! I am doing a learning project, attempting to build an imperative language (and interpreter). The end product will be useless for others, I just want to learn and better understand how to build imperative languages. :) If someone else shares this interest and want to give some good hints on good resources I would be grateful. Currently I am looking at an awesome text by Bob Nystrom. All suggestions and tips on resources are most welcome. I am very much a beginner in this, but I find this topic very fascinating. Mail me or post links here! Cheers! You can try a beta version Online at…
2020
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Everything that would be here is in the README. I hope this gets big, it has tons of potential.
2013 · github.com
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Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…
2024 · creativewidgets.io
- 19LI
Hi HN! I kept hearing about Lisp and why it was special but didn't have a great place to start. I wanted something self-contained that helped me develop intuition rather than fluency. My hope is this is helpful for casual programmers, professionals from other fields who interact with code, or engineers who haven't had much exposure to interpreters or compilers. Hope this helps anyone else who's curious about getting a sense of Lisp and what makes it special with a limited time investment! Feedback or other cool Lisp things welcome :)
2022 · github.com
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Hey HN, I built an alternative to Google translate that's fast, accurate, and 1/30th the price. 20+ supported languages, not billed until 100k tokens, and already used thousands of times with real language learning users. The landing page has a demo for you to test performance yourself for free with no card required. (Also landing page says 1/13 the price because had to account for all 3 big names, with varying prices each). I built this as a workaround for my language learning startup, and it was perfect at a fraction of the cost. Hopefully it can help other devs in accessibility…
2023 · translateapi.web.app
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I was finally able to finish this open-source project that I built to about 90% completion nearly 2 years ago when my daughter was born, during my 1-month parental leave, and then sadly left untouched until a few weeks ago. Hope you enjoy trying out the app and looking at the source code! :) GitHub link here: https://github.com/jaredreich/calcutext
2022 · calcutext.com
- 22IM
Hi HN! In the last couple of weeks I've been working on Cranki: Cranki = Crosswords + Anki. (It's a stupid name tbh, haha) I like doing crosswords in Spanish (to learn vocab) but none of the apps out there allowed me to use my own list of words that I come across. So I built one instead. It's entirely client-side. No server, no database, no accounts, etc. Your words and stats are stored in local storage. I built this for myself but let me know if you like it!
Apr 2026 · cranki.app
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Hi HN, I'm the author. I built this project for two simple reasons: I've always used higher-level languages and wanted to finally understand what's happening "under the hood" of an interpreter. I also wanted a real project to force me to "power up" my C skills, especially with manual memory management and reference counting. The result is ToyForth, a minimal interpreter for a Forth-like language, written from scratch in C, stack-based. I focused on making the code clean and understandable. It's broken down into a few simple parts: A parser that turns source text into a list of objects…
Nov 2025 · github.com
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