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The article talks about the difficulty in that. With the TI-8x series you could work directly on the device. With today's tablets you need a computer and develo

The article talks about the difficulty in that. With the TI-8x series you could work directly on the device. With today's tablets you need a computer and developer licenses.

bluedino 13y ago
Then again we are talking about a device called a 'programmable calculator', you can't really compare it to an iPad. It's funny how the barrier of entry to programming is higher now in some cases, but lower in others. In the old days computers booted to BASIC. C compilers etc cost hundreds of dollars. Today's devices don't boot into BASIC but you can get a ton of programming environments and tools for nothing other than the cost of a download or copying a disk. Even to work with Apple devices you're only looking at $99/year (not counting $1,000 for the necessary Mac) Maybe Apple should make some sort of student license where you can work with 1-5 devices but you can't publish on the store?
- rjsw 13y ago
  The first device that I wrote a program for was a TI-57, this was a couple of years before I learned BASIC, the idea that you can make something follow your instructions is important.
fiatmoney 13y ago
Or something like this: http://pythonforios.com http://pythonforios.com Which nicely replicates the feeling of laboriously typing in code you acquired from who-knows-where.
joshuahedlund 13y ago
> With today's tablets you need a computer and developer licenses. In a way, yes, but that depends on what level of meta you're thinking of. You couldn't "work directly" on the TI in the sense of altering or adding to the programming app itself (if we think of it in the sense of an app). In that sense, how hard would it be to create a TI-equivalent coding app (GoTo Labels and all!) that could run on today's tablets?
yareally 13y ago
There's a pretty good IDE that runs directly on Android[1], though I still find programming much too painful to do on anything other than a PC (screen size, etc). For a kid that's just getting interested in stuff, something like that might be useful (or for anyone else doing small modifications). Might be a bit more difficult to find something equivalent for native development on iOS though. I guess the difference is that one has to seek out the tools versus them coming preloaded on graphing calculators. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl...

The article talks about the difficulty in that. With the TI-8x series you could work directly on the device. With today's tablets you need a computer and developer licenses.

bluedino 13y ago

Then again we are talking about a device called a 'programmable calculator', you can't really compare it to an iPad. It's funny how the barrier of entry to programming is higher now in some cases, but lower in others. In the old days computers booted to BASIC. C compilers etc cost hundreds of dollars. Today's devices don't boot into BASIC but you can get a ton of programming environments and tools for nothing other than the cost of a download or copying a disk. Even to work with Apple devices you're only looking at $99/year (not counting $1,000 for the necessary Mac) Maybe Apple should make some sort of student license where you can work with 1-5 devices but you can't publish on the store?

rjsw 13y ago
The first device that I wrote a program for was a TI-57, this was a couple of years before I learned BASIC, the idea that you can make something follow your instructions is important.

fiatmoney 13y ago

Or something like this: http://pythonforios.com http://pythonforios.com Which nicely replicates the feeling of laboriously typing in code you acquired from who-knows-where.

joshuahedlund 13y ago

> With today's tablets you need a computer and developer licenses. In a way, yes, but that depends on what level of meta you're thinking of. You couldn't "work directly" on the TI in the sense of altering or adding to the programming app itself (if we think of it in the sense of an app). In that sense, how hard would it be to create a TI-equivalent coding app (GoTo Labels and all!) that could run on today's tablets?

yareally 13y ago

There's a pretty good IDE that runs directly on Android[1], though I still find programming much too painful to do on anything other than a PC (screen size, etc). For a kid that's just getting interested in stuff, something like that might be useful (or for anyone else doing small modifications). Might be a bit more difficult to find something equivalent for native development on iOS though. I guess the difference is that one has to seek out the tools versus them coming preloaded on graphing calculators. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl...