4 ms·

The first software I made that had users other than myself was a Lemonade Stand clone for the TI-83 Plus. I shared it with people at my school using a link cabl

The first software I made that had users other than myself was a Lemonade Stand clone for the TI-83 Plus. I shared it with people at my school using a link cable and, as there wasn't much competition in the calculator game market, it was a big hit. The next school year, I attended a drivers ed class at our crosstown rival high school and found that my game had somehow spread to that school as well! I have no idea how it happened, but it was very satisfying seeing something I made have a life of its own. Ben Brode was on the Search Engine podcast recently and shared a very similar story.[1] I wonder how many other programmers of our generation had this experience. One thing that my game had that the original did not (and I don't know if I invented this or copied it from the version I played) was a hidden demand parameter that persisted between days. Advertising and word of mouth from satisfied customers would cause it increase, while customers going away empty-handed would cause it to decrease. That turned the game into a kind of clicker where the numbers could continue to go up and up. I also added the ability to save your game by serializing the game state to an image file, since that was the only way to save data on the TI-83 Plus that wasn't likely to be clobbered by another program. 1. https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/how-do-you-make-an-addictive-video https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/how-do-you-make-an-addictive-v...

joshstrange 3y ago
I didn’t see my games/programs get spread like that exactly but I got my start on the TI-84+ SE and spent a ton of time on ticalc (can’t remember if it was .com or .org) forums and uploaded programs and games to their archives. I wore the buttons off my calculator and did 90%+ of my programming on it (only used the desktop app to write and push code to the calculator near the end of my time using it). Then I took a HS class on Java, taught myself PHP, and never really looked back to my calculator. TI-BASIC was a great start but so limiting once I discovered other languages.
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  Still going strong! https://www.ticalc.org/ https://www.ticalc.org/
- xp84 3y ago
  In high school, my trig teacher was not only a phenomenal instructor who would patiently explain and answer questions until every last student fully grasped the concepts, but also, it turns out, proved to be a big enabler of my interest in programming. Instead of spending time working out the problems, I would spend that time every day writing a TI-BASIC program which would implement the algorithms we had just been taught and output not just the answer, but "shown work" as well. It was obvious to him that if I could write the product requirements for such a program and then implement it, I understood the material as well as someone who was solving by hand, so he fully blessed it. And I discovered that I definitely enjoyed programming (and even thinking up clever 'UI' design for my programs) more than solving math problems, although I did 'accidentally' learn to do that too along the way. I don't know if I would have been as confident to try programming later if I hadn't had that experience with TI-BASIC (indeed, a truly limiting language!).
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    If math was taught this way I would have learned much advanced math by now. I could totally dig into it this way.
  - joshstrange 3y ago
    That’s so funny, I had the exact same experience. It felt like cheating, I’d write programs to solve each step and show the work and my teacher said almost the same thing. That if I could write a program to do it then it meant I understood the core concept and that was fine. I had a solver program where you’d pick the “style” of the math program (like “4x + 2 = 12” or similar) then be asked to plug in the “4”, “2”, and “12” from the previous example and it would solve for “x”.
    - xp84 3y ago
      Nice. It would be really funny if we'd both had the same teacher :D
thenickdude 3y ago
In highschool my statistics teacher got me to key my Snake game into her graphing calculator instead of having to do the lesson, lol.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  My 9th grade social studies teacher had me fix his computer instead of taking the class final ("You already earned an A+ in my class, help me get the gradebook working so we can all go home").
mckn1ght 3y ago
I got started with a TI-85, writing math solvers and a Drug Wars clone. Did share with a link cable but never had the joy of discovering such vitality as yours!
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
>found that my game had somehow spread to that school as well ... I wonder how many other programmers of our generation had this experience. Similarly, my little brother inherited my Ti-83+ and spread all the personal software I had written to his entire class: a simple kinematics solver (byebye thinking about intro physics homework), blackjack/21 (Vegas dealer rules, no splits), and several chemistry homework utilities. Needless to say, teachers were not impressed with my/his cleverness.

joshstrange 3y ago

I didn’t see my games/programs get spread like that exactly but I got my start on the TI-84+ SE and spent a ton of time on ticalc (can’t remember if it was .com or .org) forums and uploaded programs and games to their archives. I wore the buttons off my calculator and did 90%+ of my programming on it (only used the desktop app to write and push code to the calculator near the end of my time using it). Then I took a HS class on Java, taught myself PHP, and never really looked back to my calculator. TI-BASIC was a great start but so limiting once I discovered other languages.

mckn1ght 3y ago
Still going strong! https://www.ticalc.org/ https://www.ticalc.org/
xp84 3y ago
In high school, my trig teacher was not only a phenomenal instructor who would patiently explain and answer questions until every last student fully grasped the concepts, but also, it turns out, proved to be a big enabler of my interest in programming. Instead of spending time working out the problems, I would spend that time every day writing a TI-BASIC program which would implement the algorithms we had just been taught and output not just the answer, but "shown work" as well. It was obvious to him that if I could write the product requirements for such a program and then implement it, I understood the material as well as someone who was solving by hand, so he fully blessed it. And I discovered that I definitely enjoyed programming (and even thinking up clever 'UI' design for my programs) more than solving math problems, although I did 'accidentally' learn to do that too along the way. I don't know if I would have been as confident to try programming later if I hadn't had that experience with TI-BASIC (indeed, a truly limiting language!).
- no_wizard 3y ago
  If math was taught this way I would have learned much advanced math by now. I could totally dig into it this way.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  That’s so funny, I had the exact same experience. It felt like cheating, I’d write programs to solve each step and show the work and my teacher said almost the same thing. That if I could write a program to do it then it meant I understood the core concept and that was fine. I had a solver program where you’d pick the “style” of the math program (like “4x + 2 = 12” or similar) then be asked to plug in the “4”, “2”, and “12” from the previous example and it would solve for “x”.
  - xp84 3y ago
    Nice. It would be really funny if we'd both had the same teacher :D

thenickdude 3y ago

In highschool my statistics teacher got me to key my Snake game into her graphing calculator instead of having to do the lesson, lol.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
My 9th grade social studies teacher had me fix his computer instead of taking the class final ("You already earned an A+ in my class, help me get the gradebook working so we can all go home").

mckn1ght 3y ago

I got started with a TI-85, writing math solvers and a Drug Wars clone. Did share with a link cable but never had the joy of discovering such vitality as yours!

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

>found that my game had somehow spread to that school as well ... I wonder how many other programmers of our generation had this experience. Similarly, my little brother inherited my Ti-83+ and spread all the personal software I had written to his entire class: a simple kinematics solver (byebye thinking about intro physics homework), blackjack/21 (Vegas dealer rules, no splits), and several chemistry homework utilities. Needless to say, teachers were not impressed with my/his cleverness.