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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

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

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