alt Hacker NewsThe point of the article is that he can set the C and D scales to the proportion he needs, one time, and then just move the slider around for each ingredient, rather than doing a different calculation for each ingredient. Knowing when to vary the proportion is just basic cooking knowledge which would have to be applied either way.
Replies
Compared to the suggestion of a calculator + scale (or a voice assistant, IMO), I think the annoying part is when you hit weird fractions, especially in the US.
Random dumb example: say you need 6/7ths of 3/4 of a tablespoon of table salt... or 0.64 tablespoons. That's not gonna be a common measuring device.
Look it up in terms of grams, though, call it 20g per tablespoon (or measure the original amount in grams if you like), multiple by .64, get 12.8g, use your scale to get ~13. I'm more confident in my ability to get 13g with my scale than I am to get 0.64 tablespoons (half + half of a quarter is what I'd have to use with my measuring stuff, and the "half of a quarter" is annoying when they're rounded and all...). If your voice assistant can take care of the conversions, it GREATLY speeds it up too.
(The observant could respond here that 0.64 tablespoons is damn close to 2 teaspoons and so this example off the top of my head is dumb. Which is true, but frankly I have to look up a bunch of those sorts of things any time I try them, and it could've landed on something more awkward like 0.4 tablespoons total.)
>The point of the article is that he can set the C and D scales to the proportion he needs, one time, and then just move the slider around for each ingredient, rather than doing a different calculation for each ingredient.
Is punching a number into a calculator and then multiplying by M (memory function, for the scale factor) really that much work than carefully sliding tithe slider into position and reading/eyeballing the output?