Programming mine in high school is how I ended up coding for the first time and led to my current career. Honestly a pretty good investment (from my parents) I'd say.

Same for me, it was also my first time ever seeing code, and I still remember it well. While getting ready for swim practice in a locker room, my friend challenged me to beat his score on a button mashing game he programmed earlier that day in school on his TI-84. My 12 year old self was in awe of his BASIC skills.

It wasn't the first time I programmed but it was first time I encountered problem solving with code.

I'm not one those (very admirable) people who build just to build, who make their own version of frogger or something. I need a problem to solve.

But making a program that would take the parameters of a physics problem and spit out all the other quantities or that formatted output the way my stats teacher wanted it was a huge timesaver and that motivated me.

Same.

I bounced off a python 2 tutorial and a C tutorial, but some random nobody's TI-BASIC tutorial that started really damn easy is how I became a Computer Scientist.

I eventually figured out python too!

I made my own game and got a little notoriety around the school for it.

same. My first real exposure to coding was hacking Drug Wars on my brothers old ti-89 in math class.

This new one has python, imagine

In my school, I was part of a group of students who hand-programmed games on TI-81 or TI-82 calculators using TI-BASIC. No cable transfers. Games included: Hangman, Missile Command, Minesweeper, and R-Type. Looking back, it was really amazingly impressive. Both what those calculators could do and how much free time we had to make them do it.

I programmed a Mandelbrot generator on my TI-81 (if I remember the model correctly) when I should have been paying attention in class. Entering the code was slow and painful - fortunately the algorithm is fairly simple. The batteries lasted forever, until one day I set the bailout to a ridiculously high value, given the limited resolution, and walked away.

We made multi-player games over the link cables in the early 1990s. We certainly learned a ton from building those. It's not clear how much the calculators added to the math and chemistry classes where we were supposed to use them.

You could get that same educational value from programming things on a smartphone.

What's your favorite free programming environment for commonly used smartphones?

I don't have a favorite. I do not feel like anyone that I am aware of has made proper investment to make a quality development app for mobile due to the low market demand. While development is better than on a calculator I think they are below my expectations.

> What's your favorite free programming environment for commonly used smartphones?

Termux

  pkg install python
  python
  print('hello')
  ctrl+D

Haven't tried these, but have seen them recommended:

Acode

Termux + neovim

Termux + code-server (vscode-like, accessed through phone browser at localhost)

I like Codea for iOS, though the free version has a soft-limit at 500 lines. If a project gets bigger than 500 lines you can still run code but it'll nag you to upgrade.

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 Ericsson K770i and upload through a J2ME based FTP client that also had the text editor in it. If I remember it correctly it was called MobyExplorer

It's much harder to type on a TI calculator than a smartphone.

Not sure I agree. You can "blind type" on a physical keyboard, and even if it has less sophistication in the way of inputting large amounts of text (lack of auto complete, lack of fuzzy typing/auto correct), a calculator is purpose built with tons of shortcuts and contextual menus that you access from muscle memory without second guessing yourself. Right now, if I've got a mildly complicated mathematical expression to type, I'd rather do it on a last-century calculator rather than e.g. on Android's GeoGebra.

It's been a long time since I've done it, but I could type pretty quickly on a TI-83 - even with the silly ABC keyboard layout and all.

I did, in Java 2ME for my Nokia. That was a completely different experience and much harder to get going. I did make a color 2D game though in about a week.

The TI-200 was much more accessible and fun, creating small little programs during or after class. Only once you wanted to go assembly did it become a chore again.

To summarize: not the same.

It’s not that the calculator was more than what students need, it’s that even for what it was the TI83/84 was way overpriced. It could have been like $20 at the scale they were produced.

Same! Ticalc.org was my original GitHub haha