I started out with a trusty slide rule in high school—graduated in '75, so that was standard. I liked using it. Then, in my first year as an undergrad, we were all required to get an electronic calculator. Most of my classmates picked up the Texas Instruments SR-50, which had just come out in 1973. I was a bit envious since I could only afford a knock-off at the time, but hey, it got the job done. Eventually, I got my hands on an SR-50, and I thought it was a game-changer!
We now have an Addiator in our house. MrsFtG’s aunt sent a bundle of her father’s mementos to us last year and one was included. I played with it for a few seconds, looked it up, checked it’s eBay price and haven’t touched it since.
I was in college during the transition to calculators. I remember one of my fellow tutors remarking on a student who need to find something like 9*7 and pulled out an 8-digit LED calculator to find the answer. She told him the answer just before he finished.
I have a really nice slide rule that was passed thru the family. No one else has wanted it in the last 50 years.
At one point there was a numerical calculus class that was the first one where a scientific calculator was not just allowed but required. I borrowed a friends HP-35. (He had bought it just before they announced a big price cut. Not happy.)
I still have a simple wooden slide rule. Just multiplication and logs. A friend of mine had a circular slide with a ten foot scale folded into a spiral giving it 4 digit accuracy. The trouble was you had to figure out which of the twelve turns of the spiral your answer was. To help with this the outer rim featured an ordinary slide rule.
I never heard of an addiator, but I once priced a curta. It was about $500, a bit too dear for me.
Oh and those log, and log sin tables; I hated using them.
Dr. Isaac Asimov wrote An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (PDF link).