2025-07-24 –, Main Room 1 (Main stage)
As engineers, when we are faced with creating calculations, we don’t have many options. Those choices are between Excel, Mathcad, or our own handwritten calculations. However, while this list may be small, it is not a list that is lacking in anyway. Or is it? This talk discusses a new Julia package that brings a unique feature that will have you asking, "Why hasn't this existed all along?"
This talk will discuss Handcalcs.jl which is a calculation tool that is meant to be used in a notebook-style environment. It is inspired by handcalcs.py and brings features that are only possible in Julia.
With Handcalcs.jl users will be able to turn their code into LaTeX rendered math that can then be turned into professional quality calc packages. This allows for better checking of calcs compared to Excel due to the improved readability. Mathcad will give you similar readability, but with Handcalcs.jl, users have the power of a complete programming language as well as all the useful packages and features that come along with that.
There is one more key feature though that none of these other calc packages have. Handcalcs.jl is able to render your Julia functions into LaTeX rendered math. All of the work of the function is shown automatically. This is recursive, so functions that call other functions can be rendered as well.
This talk will go through the features of Handcalcs.jl and show how to then use the tool to create complete calc packages using tools like quarto and weave (typst hopefully coming soon). It will also discuss future roadmap for the tool.
