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> there is a silver lining. These relics are excellent machines for learning low level programming without the complexity of modern hardware. My thought exactl

> 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.

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.