Understood it because it looked like the code for my childhood calc (TI 83 :p)

I'm sure you could show this post 40 years from now, people will still understand it from programming their TI-83 in high school.

Programming on a TI-83 will be a thing as long as TI-83/4s remain the "gold standard" of graphing calculators in high school.

Seriously, is there a good graphing calculator app for Android that gives you all the same functionality but runs on modern hardware? I've been out of high school for 20 years I don't care what's prohibited in exam rooms.

I remember my AP Calculus exam. We were allowed graphing calculators. So I wrote a basic program that gave all the formulas, notes and tips we could come up with in a stupid version of less. Totally legal, we were allowed calculators with whatever programs we wanted. The just didn't think someone would make a program that was nothing but hundreds of PRINT statements!

I had no concept of computer programming growing up. It was playing around with my TI-84 around junior year of high school that exposed me to it. I saw the PROGRAM button so I looked in the calculator manual and started writing TI-BASIC. I told my precalc teacher about it and she looked at me funny. She had no idea you could write programs on graphing calculators. I will always appreciate my TI-84.

Some of my teachers required you to use the school-owned calculators, which were cleared after every class. Other teachers specifically allowed you to use your own programs during class.

I think that it was pretty common for students to trade programs around, so most of the teachers knew that the calculators were programmable.

My high school precalc textbook actually walked you through the process of writing a simple quadratic formula solver program. By this time, I had actually already gotten into writing TI-BASIC (as the first time I really started learning to program, failing to wrap my head around both python and C before) and I had created a slightly more complicated formula program with input sanitization and error handling, as well as a few other silly formulas. After this chapter I started passing around this program, as well as a small game I had written. These things were probably the most recognized I will ever be for my code, and I still have both programs.

Exactly the same story here. I really enjoyed my time tinkering with the TI-84.

Yeah ! School was so boring, programming calc is what got me into computer science. I'll never forget all my programs for IFS fractals, Syracuse suite visualization, Tic Tac Toe, Minesweeper...

TI-83 version of BASIC was the first exposure to programming I ever had. My friends and I made text-based RPGs on our calculators and swapped them to play each others' during classes.

Anyone remember HTA? https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692768.aspx

It seems oddly familiar, don't you think?

Thinks change so much!

HTAs are a subset of MS's Visual Basic Script language with a smattering of built-in HTML support.

If you are a masochist, it's entirely possible to write a full application as a HTA. I once had to do this when I needed to explore an organisations Active Directory, but they wouldn't install the AD Admin tools on my Laptop, or give me local admin. (For those that know AD, it was a 'Users & Computers' clone written entirely in HTA. I used Notepad as my IDE)