4 ms·

It is a shame that calculators are stuck in the past for silly regulatory reasons, but there is a silver lining. These relics are excellent machines for learnin

It is a shame that calculators are stuck in the past for silly regulatory reasons, but there is a silver lining. These relics are excellent machines for learning low level programming without the complexity of modern hardware. You can write C code with essentially no operating system underneath you, read the keyboard I/O registers directly, flip pixels on the screen by writing to the framebuffer pointer, write your own interrupt handlers, etc. There are no other widely available computers this simple anymore, and because of their ubiquity there is still an active hobbyist community making new software. If I was going to make a course on programming I would get every student a calculator and have them write some C on it.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
> there is a silver lining. These relics are excellent machines for learning low level programming without the complexity of modern hardware. My thought exactly. Give kids a calculator app for their phone, and I'm positive far fewer would end up writing code for it - and fewer would end up as developers. There's something so cool about writing a little game and showing it to your friends when you're in 9th grade. "Dude, you programmed a game on your calculator?! You're a genius" is so fun to hear at 14 years old.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  Do you have any knowledge whether there's still much of this going on? I remember futzing around with TI Basic and downloading/sharing more complex games from others... but we didn't have smartphones then. I just wonder to what extent students still care about that stuff today. I suppose there's still some appeal from the "look like you're doing work" factor if nothing else.
  - morninglight 4y ago
    The Raspberry Pi Pico has opened the door to young experimenters thanks to the MMBasic programming language from Geoff Graham. There are several excellent videos that explain the setup and operation. The Pico is actually available for $4. The software and manual (PDF) are free to download. It is super easy to get started - 5 minutes and you're writing software that can solve problems and control I/O. PicoMite: Running BASIC on a Raspberry Pi Pico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxmjy1nz6MM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxmjy1nz6MM PicoMiteVGA Raspberry Pi Pico Running BASIC on VGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIK1ujslHHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIK1ujslHHI ....
    - pfyra 4y ago
      Yes yes, but the pico is a lot harder to program during class while looking like you are doing school work.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    It's funny reading this thread where everyone is leaning towards "those dang kids and their smartphones are missing out" while ignoring things like Roblox, where entire economies are being built of the creativity of kids
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I don’t want economies, I want kids to have genuine, self-directed creative outlets. At best today Roblox is baby’s first hustle culture.
      - BoorishBears 4y ago
        You're kidding right? Having "Robux" instead of the imaginary karma random forums, or the points different game portals had, or literally just the grind for downloads some people had somehow dashes the incredible stuff kids are inventing for play by other kids? Kids will not somehow be ruined by having an outward reward for the creativity. It doesn't work like that.
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      Just to clarify, I don't mean that kids are not programming or making games in whatever form, just that they might not care to do so on a frozen-in-time TI calculator as much as used to be the case, so the "silver lining" of an unnecessarily expensive TI calculator being a child's first programming environment might not really exist anymore. As you say, kids have many other options today.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  Looking on Amazon... TI calculators are running Python nowadays. Much easier to understand but C would be a much better introduction to computing for them :(
  - modeless 4y ago
    TI has never supported C on its calculators. That's part of the fun :)
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      It supported Assembly officially, which is better to learn how computers actually work, although they seem to have dropped support for it recently.
    - radicalbyte 4y ago
      Oh I thought they'd changed since I was at school :) In my day they only had ASM. Only my C64 was way more capable / interesting.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    The NSpire was running Lua at one point…
- apricot 4y ago
  My son just finished 9th grade and wanted to know about machine language and assembly language. I got him a Digirule 2U from bradsprojects and it clicked immediately. He wrote his first programs by hand and bit-banged them from the front panel, just like I once did on a Cosmac ELF. He found bugs and patched his programs. By playing with it, he learned about addressing modes, self-modifying code, the usefulness of a stack for implementing function calls... all of this he taught himself, in the space of a few afternoons. And just as he understood that programming like this was becoming very tedious, I showed him a symbolic assembler.
saagarjha 4y ago
Writing C for the TI-83+ is generally not a very pleasant experience. Now, for the m68k TI-89, that’s a different story.
- ska 4y ago
  Could be worse, the contemporaneous up-market option was still HP at the TI-83 time, no? In that case if I recall correctly your only options were reverse polish lisp and assembly...
undersuit 4y ago
I learned how to program basic on my 83 over a weekend between my track and field events. Made the calculator much more usable.
Nav_Panel 4y ago
Yeah, absolutely. I learned to code in middle school in TI Basic during math class (much to my math teacher's dismay), writing little platformer games as a snarl of GOTOs and pixel on-off (because the more robust drawing functions weren't fast enough to do real-time gameplay/animation). Impossible code to read, but I had a lot of fun.
omginternets 4y ago
Damn, that would be incredible. Any chance you’d consider making a YouTube series?
christkv 4y ago
I plan to check out https://www.aoz.studio/ https://www.aoz.studio/ its by the guy who wrote the legendary AMOS games programming software for the Amiga and looks a fun way to teach programming

TimTheTinker 4y ago

> there is a silver lining. These relics are excellent machines for learning low level programming without the complexity of modern hardware. My thought exactly. Give kids a calculator app for their phone, and I'm positive far fewer would end up writing code for it - and fewer would end up as developers. There's something so cool about writing a little game and showing it to your friends when you're in 9th grade. "Dude, you programmed a game on your calculator?! You're a genius" is so fun to hear at 14 years old.

zerocrates 4y ago
Do you have any knowledge whether there's still much of this going on? I remember futzing around with TI Basic and downloading/sharing more complex games from others... but we didn't have smartphones then. I just wonder to what extent students still care about that stuff today. I suppose there's still some appeal from the "look like you're doing work" factor if nothing else.
- morninglight 4y ago
  The Raspberry Pi Pico has opened the door to young experimenters thanks to the MMBasic programming language from Geoff Graham. There are several excellent videos that explain the setup and operation. The Pico is actually available for $4. The software and manual (PDF) are free to download. It is super easy to get started - 5 minutes and you're writing software that can solve problems and control I/O. PicoMite: Running BASIC on a Raspberry Pi Pico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxmjy1nz6MM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxmjy1nz6MM PicoMiteVGA Raspberry Pi Pico Running BASIC on VGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIK1ujslHHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIK1ujslHHI ....
  - pfyra 4y ago
    Yes yes, but the pico is a lot harder to program during class while looking like you are doing school work.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  It's funny reading this thread where everyone is leaning towards "those dang kids and their smartphones are missing out" while ignoring things like Roblox, where entire economies are being built of the creativity of kids
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I don’t want economies, I want kids to have genuine, self-directed creative outlets. At best today Roblox is baby’s first hustle culture.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      You're kidding right? Having "Robux" instead of the imaginary karma random forums, or the points different game portals had, or literally just the grind for downloads some people had somehow dashes the incredible stuff kids are inventing for play by other kids? Kids will not somehow be ruined by having an outward reward for the creativity. It doesn't work like that.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    Just to clarify, I don't mean that kids are not programming or making games in whatever form, just that they might not care to do so on a frozen-in-time TI calculator as much as used to be the case, so the "silver lining" of an unnecessarily expensive TI calculator being a child's first programming environment might not really exist anymore. As you say, kids have many other options today.
radicalbyte 4y ago
Looking on Amazon... TI calculators are running Python nowadays. Much easier to understand but C would be a much better introduction to computing for them :(
- modeless 4y ago
  TI has never supported C on its calculators. That's part of the fun :)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    It supported Assembly officially, which is better to learn how computers actually work, although they seem to have dropped support for it recently.
  - radicalbyte 4y ago
    Oh I thought they'd changed since I was at school :) In my day they only had ASM. Only my C64 was way more capable / interesting.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  The NSpire was running Lua at one point…
apricot 4y ago
My son just finished 9th grade and wanted to know about machine language and assembly language. I got him a Digirule 2U from bradsprojects and it clicked immediately. He wrote his first programs by hand and bit-banged them from the front panel, just like I once did on a Cosmac ELF. He found bugs and patched his programs. By playing with it, he learned about addressing modes, self-modifying code, the usefulness of a stack for implementing function calls... all of this he taught himself, in the space of a few afternoons. And just as he understood that programming like this was becoming very tedious, I showed him a symbolic assembler.

saagarjha 4y ago

Writing C for the TI-83+ is generally not a very pleasant experience. Now, for the m68k TI-89, that’s a different story.

ska 4y ago
Could be worse, the contemporaneous up-market option was still HP at the TI-83 time, no? In that case if I recall correctly your only options were reverse polish lisp and assembly...

undersuit 4y ago

I learned how to program basic on my 83 over a weekend between my track and field events. Made the calculator much more usable.

Nav_Panel 4y ago

Yeah, absolutely. I learned to code in middle school in TI Basic during math class (much to my math teacher's dismay), writing little platformer games as a snarl of GOTOs and pixel on-off (because the more robust drawing functions weren't fast enough to do real-time gameplay/animation). Impossible code to read, but I had a lot of fun.

omginternets 4y ago

Damn, that would be incredible. Any chance you’d consider making a YouTube series?

christkv 4y ago

I plan to check out https://www.aoz.studio/ https://www.aoz.studio/ its by the guy who wrote the legendary AMOS games programming software for the Amiga and looks a fun way to teach programming