6 ms·

I had a TI Calculator in my pocket and I learned first learned how to program on it during classes from 7th grade on. I made all sorts of text-based games: rpgs

I had a TI Calculator in my pocket and I learned first learned how to program on it during classes from 7th grade on. I made all sorts of text-based games: rpgs, text-based tetris, action games, fighting games (which was basically just pick an attack and a different formula with random numbers would happen that said how much hp you hurt the opponent), etc. But 'smartphones' nowadays makes it difficult for you to create on them, especially program code that you can run on the device. I might not have gotten such an early understanding of how to program if I didn't have a programmable device in my pocket to take with me everywhere and play with. I wouldn't have such a problem with smartphones if it was a fun toy to make things with. Even now, the only thing I ever really 'make' on the device are some notes that I then use on 'real' devices later.

j45 9y ago
I did the same with my TI85 as well. Part of it I think is we have to focus on productivity and providing value because the hardware couldn't render high end experiences. Creating seems to have fallen by the day wide compared to mindless consuming, interaction and feeding content to social aggregation companies who sell users attention to advertisers. As dreary as this topic is, it's kind of nice to see a healthy exploration about more than the one current way of using tech.
- TylerE 9y ago
  I think the key thing with programming on the T/Is was that input handling and output was super super simple. Text display addressable by row/column... something like 8x24 if memory serves? No mucking about with event loops, window handlers, setup functions...
  - j45 9y ago
    Yup. ticalc.org was great too. Build your own serial transfer cable... Build external storage..
- jstarfish 9y ago
  > Part of it I think is we have to focus on productivity and providing value because the hardware couldn't render high end experiences. Constraint drives creativity. Early web development had the same principles...you could only expect the user to wait so long for a page load on a dialup connection before you lost their attention, so the goal was to make each and every one worth the wait.
dv_dt 9y ago
I understand your worry, but your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers. Different niches proliferate, grow, and wane all the time. After you and TI calcs, probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers, and hobby makers and minecrafters. People who are interested in programming will hopefully find their own starting niches. Hopefully we don't ever stop opening up new areas - I think the best we can do as a community is promote tinkering in any form to provide a variety of avenues for kids to get exposed in different ways.
- johnmaguire2013 9y ago
  > probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers Neopets allowed "pet pages" containing HTML when I was 10 years old, and this was my first foray into programming.
  - seangrogg 9y ago
    Likewise; to this day I still talk about how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to building web content.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      Neopets, MySpace, Xanga, Angelfire, Tripod, Geocities...
      - seangrogg 9y ago
        Minus Xanga, I made heaps of terrible UI decisions on those platforms. Good times =)
  - giggles_giggles 9y ago
    My girlfriend, otherwise non-technical, still maintains one of these. There's this huge tribal knowledge built up around copy-paste CSS hacks to enable things like tab navigation all on one page with no JS. It's actually pretty wild some of the stuff these folks do, especially since almost none of them have any technical knowledge and it's all trial-and-error and sharing what works through the forums. The amount of hackery they do for their forum guild pages (hosted as pet pages) and such almost blows my mind more than the fact that Neopets is still around and somewhat active after all these years.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Nowadays you can get much cheaper all-purpose computers though; if kids are tinkerers like you were, they will find a way, either on their smartphones or on a raspberry pi or whatever. And if they don't - accept it, they're not you, and they'll probably end up better off than you did.
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  It's more complicated than that because distractions play a huge role. If you've got access to endless stream of entertainment and games you're obviously less likely to find time to explore the other stuff that you can do with computers. I know quite a lot of tech savvy and smart people who loved tinkering with computers but never really got to the point of being able to do anything professionally because they've got distracted by too much Starcraft, WoW, etc...
  - jclardy 9y ago
    I agree with this. I was also a calculator-tinkerer who learned TI-Basic on my TI-83 (And later z80 assembly.) I doubt I would have ended up down the same path had I had an iPhone 7 instead. Yes, there are educational apps, but then again there is infinitely more content available than what is available for a calculator. The limitations on the calculator seemed to be a big driving factor in my interest at the time. The drive to push it beyond its intended purpose. With smartphones...you don't really have that because apps already exist for nearly everything.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    You're ignoring what they said. They're not you, so stop trying to force them to either become you or be better than you were. Just let your kids be kids and grow on their own.
    - musage 9y ago
      And how does that apply to what it was replied to, namely this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16100002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16100002 If "but they're not you" (what they? there is no they in that comment) is such a great argument that it absolutely needs a response, "you're not the person you're talking to, stop trying to influence them, they're not you" is a sufficient one. Your own medicine, take it first.
desireco42 9y ago
This is the real problem in my view. I blame Apple for this mostly, as they are creating consumption platforms instead of creativity ones. It is not just tinkering, these devices are made for you to consume, not to produce. Which is a great shame as they are natural creative platforms, we just need somehow to break the chains and liberate them, both phones and tablets.
pharrington 9y ago
Yes, it's easy to write a TI-BASIC program on a TI graphic calculator. It's barely less easy to open your web browser, type in "jsfiddle" or "shadertoy," and get coding environments that have considerably better and more instant feedback than what's available on your TI. And that's before opening up your app store and searching for "compiler" or "IDE."
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Yeah you can download an IDE and then not run the code, or run the code by connecting to a server, which you might not even have internet access at the time. And even then you're probably not able to make asset rich games on them, or create graphics, save them, and call them in your program (game). Design websites, yeah I guess. Create shell scripts, yeah no problem. But games are another story. Not impossible, I'm sure, but not easy. Yes, the TI had this. I would spend 30 minutes drawing a dragon image and saving it, then loading it in my choose your own adventure text game, without breaking a sweat, changing things and iterating quickly while sitting through an algebra class where I knew everything that was taught instantly (because I already used it in code) where all the other kids needed the rest of the class plus more to understand. I would use the greek alphabet as makeshift sprites, the letter "O" as a ball and the equals sign "=" as bricks in an alleyway clone, etc. I'm not saying kids should still be expected to do this. There should be newer and better tools, focused on that creation.
  - pharrington 9y ago
    To make sure I wasn't hallucinating, using an old Droid Ultra, I downloaded an app named "Mobile C (C/C++ Compiler)", turned on airplane mode, launched the app, compiled and ran hello world, than compiled and ran some demo programs that app is bundled with (many of which are simple multimedia demos). That's not opinion.
    - cableshaft 9y ago
      I looked it up, and that is pretty interesting. It compiles offline, and even has SDL? I didn't think Apple would allow that. I'll have to check into this more. Thanks for mentioning a specific app.
photojosh 9y ago
I can only speak for the iOS side. (I understand Android has fewer limitations on what can be done.) Have a look at Pythonista for a full Python environment, or Coda for a web dev environment. There's also all the web-based tools, hopefully some are optimised for smaller screens. On iPad you have Playgrounds to run all sorts of Swift code. For kids, there's other simple environments in apps like Scratch. So as you might imagine, I disagree with your statement that "'smartphones' nowadays makes it difficult for you to create on them", and think that's just a case of nostalgia on your behalf.

j45 9y ago

I did the same with my TI85 as well. Part of it I think is we have to focus on productivity and providing value because the hardware couldn't render high end experiences. Creating seems to have fallen by the day wide compared to mindless consuming, interaction and feeding content to social aggregation companies who sell users attention to advertisers. As dreary as this topic is, it's kind of nice to see a healthy exploration about more than the one current way of using tech.

TylerE 9y ago
I think the key thing with programming on the T/Is was that input handling and output was super super simple. Text display addressable by row/column... something like 8x24 if memory serves? No mucking about with event loops, window handlers, setup functions...
- j45 9y ago
  Yup. ticalc.org was great too. Build your own serial transfer cable... Build external storage..
jstarfish 9y ago
> Part of it I think is we have to focus on productivity and providing value because the hardware couldn't render high end experiences. Constraint drives creativity. Early web development had the same principles...you could only expect the user to wait so long for a page load on a dialup connection before you lost their attention, so the goal was to make each and every one worth the wait.

dv_dt 9y ago

I understand your worry, but your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers. Different niches proliferate, grow, and wane all the time. After you and TI calcs, probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers, and hobby makers and minecrafters. People who are interested in programming will hopefully find their own starting niches. Hopefully we don't ever stop opening up new areas - I think the best we can do as a community is promote tinkering in any form to provide a variety of avenues for kids to get exposed in different ways.

johnmaguire2013 9y ago
> probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers Neopets allowed "pet pages" containing HTML when I was 10 years old, and this was my first foray into programming.
- seangrogg 9y ago
  Likewise; to this day I still talk about how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to building web content.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    Neopets, MySpace, Xanga, Angelfire, Tripod, Geocities...
    - seangrogg 9y ago
      Minus Xanga, I made heaps of terrible UI decisions on those platforms. Good times =)
- giggles_giggles 9y ago
  My girlfriend, otherwise non-technical, still maintains one of these. There's this huge tribal knowledge built up around copy-paste CSS hacks to enable things like tab navigation all on one page with no JS. It's actually pretty wild some of the stuff these folks do, especially since almost none of them have any technical knowledge and it's all trial-and-error and sharing what works through the forums. The amount of hackery they do for their forum guild pages (hosted as pet pages) and such almost blows my mind more than the fact that Neopets is still around and somewhat active after all these years.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

Nowadays you can get much cheaper all-purpose computers though; if kids are tinkerers like you were, they will find a way, either on their smartphones or on a raspberry pi or whatever. And if they don't - accept it, they're not you, and they'll probably end up better off than you did.

ivanhoe 9y ago
It's more complicated than that because distractions play a huge role. If you've got access to endless stream of entertainment and games you're obviously less likely to find time to explore the other stuff that you can do with computers. I know quite a lot of tech savvy and smart people who loved tinkering with computers but never really got to the point of being able to do anything professionally because they've got distracted by too much Starcraft, WoW, etc...
- jclardy 9y ago
  I agree with this. I was also a calculator-tinkerer who learned TI-Basic on my TI-83 (And later z80 assembly.) I doubt I would have ended up down the same path had I had an iPhone 7 instead. Yes, there are educational apps, but then again there is infinitely more content available than what is available for a calculator. The limitations on the calculator seemed to be a big driving factor in my interest at the time. The drive to push it beyond its intended purpose. With smartphones...you don't really have that because apps already exist for nearly everything.
- noobermin 9y ago
  You're ignoring what they said. They're not you, so stop trying to force them to either become you or be better than you were. Just let your kids be kids and grow on their own.
  - musage 9y ago
    And how does that apply to what it was replied to, namely this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16100002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16100002 If "but they're not you" (what they? there is no they in that comment) is such a great argument that it absolutely needs a response, "you're not the person you're talking to, stop trying to influence them, they're not you" is a sufficient one. Your own medicine, take it first.

desireco42 9y ago

This is the real problem in my view. I blame Apple for this mostly, as they are creating consumption platforms instead of creativity ones. It is not just tinkering, these devices are made for you to consume, not to produce. Which is a great shame as they are natural creative platforms, we just need somehow to break the chains and liberate them, both phones and tablets.

pharrington 9y ago

Yes, it's easy to write a TI-BASIC program on a TI graphic calculator. It's barely less easy to open your web browser, type in "jsfiddle" or "shadertoy," and get coding environments that have considerably better and more instant feedback than what's available on your TI. And that's before opening up your app store and searching for "compiler" or "IDE."

cableshaft 9y ago
Yeah you can download an IDE and then not run the code, or run the code by connecting to a server, which you might not even have internet access at the time. And even then you're probably not able to make asset rich games on them, or create graphics, save them, and call them in your program (game). Design websites, yeah I guess. Create shell scripts, yeah no problem. But games are another story. Not impossible, I'm sure, but not easy. Yes, the TI had this. I would spend 30 minutes drawing a dragon image and saving it, then loading it in my choose your own adventure text game, without breaking a sweat, changing things and iterating quickly while sitting through an algebra class where I knew everything that was taught instantly (because I already used it in code) where all the other kids needed the rest of the class plus more to understand. I would use the greek alphabet as makeshift sprites, the letter "O" as a ball and the equals sign "=" as bricks in an alleyway clone, etc. I'm not saying kids should still be expected to do this. There should be newer and better tools, focused on that creation.
- pharrington 9y ago
  To make sure I wasn't hallucinating, using an old Droid Ultra, I downloaded an app named "Mobile C (C/C++ Compiler)", turned on airplane mode, launched the app, compiled and ran hello world, than compiled and ran some demo programs that app is bundled with (many of which are simple multimedia demos). That's not opinion.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    I looked it up, and that is pretty interesting. It compiles offline, and even has SDL? I didn't think Apple would allow that. I'll have to check into this more. Thanks for mentioning a specific app.

photojosh 9y ago

I can only speak for the iOS side. (I understand Android has fewer limitations on what can be done.) Have a look at Pythonista for a full Python environment, or Coda for a web dev environment. There's also all the web-based tools, hopefully some are optimised for smaller screens. On iPad you have Playgrounds to run all sorts of Swift code. For kids, there's other simple environments in apps like Scratch. So as you might imagine, I disagree with your statement that "'smartphones' nowadays makes it difficult for you to create on them", and think that's just a case of nostalgia on your behalf.