Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current smartphones are highly optimized for content consumption a.k.a doom scrolling. Nothing serious exists for programming. On top of that, a touch keyboard and hard to reach special characters make programming on a modern smartphone a big chore. I miss the old days of smartphones that had a hardware keyboard with tactile feedback. I used to code up and maintain a PHP based dynamic website circa 2007 with a Sony E…
It's much harder to type on a TI calculator than a smartphone.
Ti-84 Evo
401–410 of 503 posts
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#402Re: Ti-84 Evo
#403Any MCU out of their portfolio should be fully capable of driving the display, reading the keyboard. And the math should be lightweight for even the smallest processors nowadays.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#404Re: Ti-84 Evo
#405My TI-85 story. While I was in prison, around 1996 or 1997, I found out a friend had a TI-85 calculator. I realized it was programmable, so I borrowed it over the weekend and wrote a program to track his stock portfolio. It was the first time I had programmed anything in 2 or 3 years. Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed th…
You're a hero of mine so here is my story. Me in math class in 1996 - I had a TI-82 things are programmable so I have no formal education, my parents are illiterate, and taught myself to program, and I begged them to buy me one. I spent time learning how to code on it, writing from scratch, the game Spyhunter. I couldn't figure out how to draw with lines or pixels so I used ASCII or text. I presented this to my teach…
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#406Re: Ti-84 Evo
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone here have an idea why the models jumped around like that? Like why'd the 82 come out after the 85, or the 83 after the 92?
They had different models with different capabilities. As they made minor style changes, they bumped the numbers slightly. The 81–82–83–84 were basically the same concept, as were the 85–86. The 89 and 92 were higher-end models. The 80 and 73 are simpler models intended for middle school. All of them are basically a multi-generational scam perpetrated against the hapless parents of American high school students who w…
There is an interesting side effect from having always used TI calculators. They use a dot as the decimal separator, not a comma like we do here. There is usually some option to switch, but the hardware button obviously stays the same, so I’ve always been taught to just make that switch in my head, and it has become the natural thing for me to do. I see 1,000.50 on a screen I write down 1.000,50. When I use software that uses a comma as the decimal separator, I get annoyed and it takes some mental effort to enter the right values.
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#408My TI-85 story. While I was in prison, around 1996 or 1997, I found out a friend had a TI-85 calculator. I realized it was programmable, so I borrowed it over the weekend and wrote a program to track his stock portfolio. It was the first time I had programmed anything in 2 or 3 years. Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed th…
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#409Summary of the comments in here: * I used the programming functionality of the calculator to get around the rules * I didn't care much for the math, but my TI calculator was my first programming experience and it's what got me to love programming My experience is similar. We were allowed to use our TI-85s in class, but we had to go up to the teacher before the test and show him that we were running a factory reset, t…
Re: Ti-84 Evo
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
for context tests like SAT, ACT, and some AP exams are using Desmos, yes however: - this means you have to fiddle with a popover window and can't always see the full problem (especially when the reference sheet is also online) - you have less muscle memory and often take longer - harder to multitask (you use paper anyways, and the paper to calculator friction is lower than the paper to trackpad friction - trackpads o…
Ideally the tests would not require external tools at all. There's nothing that needs to be tested in the context of a high school course that can't done with pencil and paper.