salut à tous !
Voici la première interview de HP-Ntework !
Pour commencer, nous avons choisi de poser des questions à Eric Rechlin, webmaster de www.hpcalc.org, le site le plus visité de la communauté HP.
Il nous raconte l'histoire de son site, et nous dis ce qu'il pense de la communauté des HPusers ...

1) Can you introduce yourself? (how old are you? what is your job? ...)

I was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, USA. I'm 20 years old and am a student in electrical/computer engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas.


2) How did you discover HP calculators?

There are several answers to this question.

What made me first consider an HP calculator was seeing an HP48 in a Best store (I think the chain has since gone out of business) many years ago.
When I was in junior high school, my grandparents gave me a 48 as a gift.

However, I hadn't truly "discovered" them then. It wasn't until later, in 1996-1997, that I began to experience the HP calculator community.

My desire to spend a lot of time with HP calculators was definitely inspired by the father of a friend of mine. He is absolutely amazing at mathematics, and he owned, among other HP calculators, an HP48 as well, and he very generously gave me a 1MB RAM card for my 48.

The memory card gave me enough memory to spend time trying out program after program, learning about all the capabilities of the HP48. It also influenced me into spending more time reading the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup, allowing me to learn from others. Reading the newsgroup not only improved my calculator skills, but the many interesting topics provided me with tidbits of information from so many math- and science-related fields.

It was then, when I began to understand the community -- yes, it is definitely a community -- that I would say that I discovered HP calculators.


3) How did you have the idea to make a web site about them? When did you start hpcalc.org? What were the evolutions since the beginning?

In mid-1997, I was looking for a few programs for my 48GX but couldn't remember their names (they were ALG48 and Double Tetris, BTW).
Although I had had a 48 for a couple years and had experimented with a number of programs, I really hadn't paid much attention to everything I was trying and didn't know much about what program was what. I downloaded a lot of programs off various FTP sites, but after a while when I needed a program I had seen earlier, I never could find what I was looking for. So, I decided to download HP's entire calculator FTP site, then all of ftp.cis.com's HP site, and then some more sites.

Then, in mid-July 1997, so close to four and a half years ago, I started going through the files, finding duplicates and categorizing some of  them.
At the time, I probably had downloaded 3000 files. I then decided that if I could benefit from what I was doing, others probably could too, so the time spent working would help more than just myself. I packaged the files with documentation into zip files, and if no documentation existed,  sometimes I wrote a simple text file explaining what I could figure out. Then, in early August I began writing the HTML description files, and, on August 21, 1997, I announced the site to comp.sys.hp48.

At that time I had about 1500 files, since I had combined documentation with programs and had removed duplicates, of which 1000 or so had descriptions.
My employer (which was also my school district) was nice enough to allow me to put my server on its T1 line. Over time, I expanded my site, passing 3000 calculator-related files by the two-year mark and approaching 5000 files now.

I used hp48.ml.org, a free domain, from August 1997 to August 1998. In June 1998 I bought the hpcalc.org domain name, and announced the domain name, along with a new site design, to the public in August for its first anniversary.

For the first three years, I maintained my entire site with Windows Notepad.
All the code, all the links -- everything -- was hand-coded and manually maintained. It took an extraordinary amount of time, definitely in the thousands of hours over the years. Adding each program ended up taking 15-20 minutes after taking into account the time making the program listing, making the What's New links, and uploading the files.

I decided that it was way too time consuming to continue as it was, so in the summer of 2000 I learned PHP and SQL to automate the site. I wrote a series of scripts to generate the site's code -- while leaving the code looking exactly the same as it was when it was manually coded -- and to update the site. In August 2000 I launched the new, fully-automated version of my site.

Now, with the new design, as long as all programs are submitted exactly according to the instructions on the contributions page, it doesn't  take more than a couple minutes to add or update programs. Unfortunately,
not everyone follows the directions, which frustrates me as it delays the updating of the site.

I still have not changed the appearance of the main page of the site since the 1998 redesign -- a great while in Internet time. Sometime I would  like to touch up the design, making it a little easier to browse while still
being efficient, but I haven't had time to do so.


4) Do you think that the HP world is dead?

The HP world definitely is not dead. However, it does seem to be  dying.
Now that ACO has been shut down, the chances of the arrival of any new HP calculators are slim to none. With marketing non-existent and with the calculators disappearing from stores, the sales are sure to drop off.

Then the only HP calculator users will be those who have been around in the community for a while. There will surely be some new members, but I fear that the rate of people leaving will exceed the rate of people
arriving, if it has not already happened.

I also see the gradual disappearance of RPN. It's truly a sad thing to see happen, since RPN is so much more efficient than algebraic input, but if RPN calculators stop being produced (which will happen if/when HP halts calculator production), there is no hope. Those who have learned RPN never seem to want to go back, but there are far too many who have never even *heard* of it.

What can we do about this? I wish I knew. I don't see any viable options.
I don't have anything against Texas Instruments -- they simply used smart marketing to take advantage of the industry that HP handed to them. But it's so distressing to see the nearly inevitable elimination of a
superior product from the market.


5) Will the updates be as frequent in the future? Will you shut down your web site?

Updates will slow down. They definitely have already, for various reasons.
With my coursework, I no longer have as much time to work on my site as I would like. During the academic year, I will try to update the site on weekends but I can't make many guarantees other than that.

However, they also are slowing down for another reason. People are writing fewer programs. When only, on average, 1-2 new programs come out a day, I can't possibly update my site as much as I did when I could find 5 or more new programs every day.

I don't intend to ever stop my web site. As long as there is someone willing to host it and sufficiently many people to visit it, I will keep it running. But I have a feeling that if my interest in HP calculators reduces, it will parallel a similar reduction interest of the calculator community as well, meaning that as long as my site is wanted it should be there.


6) How many visitors does your site receive?

I really don't know. I have no good way of getting statistics on the site, partially because it is hosted on two servers, of which I only have log reports from one. From what I have seen, however, I would guess that I
receive 15,000 unique visitors a week.


7) How much time do you spend updating the site a day?

Over the past years it has ranged greatly. I remember putting in a number of 8-hour days on weekends and summers. On the other hand, there have been a number of days where I haven't done anything. I'd say that from 1997 to 2000 I probably averaged 3 hours a day. For 2000-2001 I'd say it's more
like half an hour to an hour a day.


8) Are you working alone on hpcalc.org?

Yes, I always have worked alone on the site. It's my personal contribution to the HP calculator community, providing a "warehouse" of everybody else's contributions.

Working alone always has seemed best for me. It means there are no arguments as to how things should be done, no debates over titles/positions (seeing all the dumb titles that maintainers of TI calculator websites give themselves is amusing to me).

A lot of people over the years have offered to help me with my site.
In response, I usually ask them about their abilities and give them a suggestion of something they could be doing to help me. Nobody has ever followed through. I think that these people think that they're going to get "fame" by associating themselves with my web site and don't actually want to do any work. Maybe they don't realize that even *I* don't really have any fame from my site, nor do I want any.


9) Do you earn money with your site?

Not at the present time, and probably not in the future, either.

For the first few years I sold copies of the web site on CD. However, it was very time-consuming, since each disc was custom-burned with the latest files, and I realized that I just didn't have that kind of free time.
I ended up selling a couple hundred discs over the years, however. I still burn discs for those who request them, however, but I don't advertise it.

For a while, I also helped Surveyor's Module Inc. (SMI) close out a small inventory of some used HP48 RAM cards, but I sold out of those within about six months.


10) What are your relations with Hewlett-Packard? Is there a partnership?

I am not affiliated with them in any way. My site is completely independent from Hewlett-Packard.


11) What do you think about the other sites about HP calculators, such as www.hp-network.com?

There aren't enough other HP calculator web sites. One might think that I should be happy that I have, by far, the largest and most heavily trafficked HP calculator web site, but I don't like it at all. It means that nobody else is trying very hard. It gives me fewer incentives or ideas to improve my site. I'm forced to look for new ideas on TI calculator web sites since there are so few other HP sites.

However, I don't see the need for another software download site. If another one existed, it would probably just be a copy of my web site, which would be pointless and would not be fair to me, unless it were created new from scratch, but nobody would spend the thousands of hours that that would require.

What I would like to see are more HP calculator web sites that serve other purposes. For example, Carlos Marangon's Area48 is an excellent example of a site aimed at helping people gain familiarity with using their HP calculators. David Hicks has produced the absolutely fascinating Museum of HP Calculators, which details the history of HP calculators and deserves many hours of one's time. I am not as familiar with the French language sites, partly because many of the big ones seem to have disappeared.


12) What do you think about the HP community in the world and in the USA?

Outside the USA, I can't give an honest answer since everything I know is just what I've heard from others. I am in no position to make a judgment of the status of the worldwide HP calculator community.

However, from what I have seen in the USA, it doesn't look good. HP calculator users seem to be getting fewer and farther between. In high school in North Dakota, the only other owners of HP calculators were those whom I had convinced to buy HP calculators.

At my university, which has an excellent engineering program, I still don't see many HP calculators. TI models significantly outnumber HP models even among the electrical engineering students.

Those students who participated seriously in UIL math competitions (something run by the state of Texas) are familiar with HP's, however, because the 32SII is regarded as the absolute best calculator for returning answers reliably and quickly because of its RPN input, excellent keyboard, and fast display, causing their owners to win the most competitions, but that still isn't a large number of students.

I think that it all can be attributed to marketing. HP gave the calculator market to TI on a silver platter, by forgetting to advertise their calculators. It is obvious that when people want to purchase  something, they rarely research the purchase very hard to buy the best product. Instead, they buy what advertisements tell them to buy, or what their friends, who listened to advertisements, tell them to buy. And this lack of advertising caused HP to fall so far behind that it became practically impossible to catch up.

We as a community can maybe to a little to promote the use of RPN calculators, but I don't think we can have much success.


13) Which HP models do you own?

I have the 6S, 14B, 17BII, 28S, 30S, 39G, 41C, 42S, 48G, 48GX, 48SX, 49G, and 75D. I'd like to have a 16C, a 71B, and a 35, but I haven't been able to find them.


14) Do you write programs for HP calculators?

No, I really don't have time to program them anymore.


15) What are your favorite programs for the HP? Who do you feel are the most influential members of the HP community?

I wouldn't even know where to begin to mention the HP programs which most impress me. I suppose the obvious responses would be MetaKernel, Java, Jazz, Erable, and ALG48, but there are many other smaller programs out there that deserve mentioning as well.

I feel that there are probably a half dozen or so people in the HP community who definitely deserve recognition. I think I would first like to mention those who've been around forever -- Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz, Bill Wickes, Richard Nelson, and Joe Horn. Then there are the programmers who
helped try to revive HP's calculators after HP nearly killed them -- Jean-Yves Avenard, Cyrille de Brebisson, Gerald Squelart, Mika Heiskanen, and Bernard Parisse.

Finally, there are those who have just done a lot to help other users, such as participating in the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup or the old HPCVBBS. There are far too many to mention, and I'm afraid of listing them for fear of leaving someone important out. But probably the most significant among them is John H Meyers, who I feel I must mention.