Comment by vidarh

it's kinda crazy, but it's fun thinking about how it would affect how you might compute values.

Some things seems like they could become very easy - e.g. addition is just pouring the water from one location into another. Overflow becomes literal overflow...

Subtraction becomes a problem of opening a valve until you've removed the right amount of water... Maybe you could use a weight mechanism that'll close once the removed amount equals the amount you're subtracting?

A precise one and/or a fast one certainly would be very hard to make, and I'm sure the real ones were a lot more complicated, but many simple operations seems like they'd be quite easy to figure out.

Can't imagine it'd be remotely practical at any kind of scale, though... It's amazing they were used as much as they were.