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I am 21, and when I was 12 I started coding with TI-BASIC, which is a (terrible, terrible) flavor of BASIC that comes on most TI graphing calculators. Most kids

I am 21, and when I was 12 I started coding with TI-BASIC, which is a (terrible, terrible) flavor of BASIC that comes on most TI graphing calculators. Most kids still have these calculators, so I imagine there are several learning on it.

analog31 13y ago
Do you think a graphing calculator is worth bothering with at all? I'm too old to have used one in school. The cynical side of me thinks that they only exist because they have a captive audience of school kids who are required to buy them.
- sirsar 13y ago
  I have found that the TI-83 series handles numbers remarkably better than many programming languages and even software packages. The built-in functions are diverse, composable, and very powerful, yet simultaneously simple to use. When I want to answer e.g., a statistics question, it's a huge time saver to plug it into the graphing calculator rather than anything else. I often prefer it even to WolframAlpha. In that respect it's well worth the $100 or so it cost.
vanderZwan 13y ago
OTOH, thanks to those graphical calculators a number of those kids will jump straight to Z80 assembly to unlock the true power of their hardware. I still think this is one of the best programming tutorials I've ever read, since it managed to make assembly look easy: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/268/26877.html http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/268/26877.html I had no trouble understanding pointers when I had a go at learning C++ later (although I'm sure the experience has left a number of other bad coding habits).
- gamegoblin 13y ago
  Indeed. A friend of mine, calc84maniac (Brendan Fletcher) even made an on-calc assembler so you didn't need a computer to write assembly. The folks over at http://cemetech.net/ http://cemetech.net/ are working on a new version of that tutorial you linked, IIRC.

analog31 13y ago

Do you think a graphing calculator is worth bothering with at all? I'm too old to have used one in school. The cynical side of me thinks that they only exist because they have a captive audience of school kids who are required to buy them.

sirsar 13y ago
I have found that the TI-83 series handles numbers remarkably better than many programming languages and even software packages. The built-in functions are diverse, composable, and very powerful, yet simultaneously simple to use. When I want to answer e.g., a statistics question, it's a huge time saver to plug it into the graphing calculator rather than anything else. I often prefer it even to WolframAlpha. In that respect it's well worth the $100 or so it cost.

vanderZwan 13y ago

OTOH, thanks to those graphical calculators a number of those kids will jump straight to Z80 assembly to unlock the true power of their hardware. I still think this is one of the best programming tutorials I've ever read, since it managed to make assembly look easy: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/268/26877.html http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/268/26877.html I had no trouble understanding pointers when I had a go at learning C++ later (although I'm sure the experience has left a number of other bad coding habits).

gamegoblin 13y ago
Indeed. A friend of mine, calc84maniac (Brendan Fletcher) even made an on-calc assembler so you didn't need a computer to write assembly. The folks over at http://cemetech.net/ http://cemetech.net/ are working on a new version of that tutorial you linked, IIRC.