WP34s Birthday Gift @ ISU

[MarkHaysHarris777]

(03-01-2015 12:46 AM)Dwight Sturrock Wrote:  I knew how to program my 42S, but I never met another student at Purdue who said they could program their TI.

Most people who own a TI-83, TI-84, TI-89 don't program them (in my experience). I have two students (now in college) who never programmed their TI machines, and they used them for six years! That is painful to a 'father' who is a professional software engineer and general computer geek. :-}

Why, you might ask, do they not get programmed? Because schools do not emphasize it, and because the BASIC environment of the 83, 84, and 89 is cumbersome. They DO NOT use keystroke programming; they use a tokenized rudimentary form of TI BASIC that is 'coded' from pneumonic menus (its awful, frankly); but, it is doable. I remember I got my son to use the programming features ONCE for his science fair project (on the TI-89).

Most of the programming I do on the TI-84 is Z80 op code programming (machine language). The system ROM is very well documented (for system I|O and function routines) and that thing is fairly fast for an 'ancient' 8 bit system. A lot of what I use the Arduino for today I used the TI-84 to accomplish... it has a great serial interface and was not a bad controller; although, it required more hardware chips in the project interface (Arduino is MUCH better today).

Cheers,
marcus