I was inspired to write a program to simulate the classic Spirograph toy after an email exchange with a parent who just bought a TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. He wanted to help his daughter get inspired about math and graphing, and asked me if I knew of any program to draw Spirograph-like graphs. Unfortunately, I did not, so over the past week I whipped up a program that lets students explore hypocycloids and epicycloids, the types of parametric curves generated by a Spirograph. In fact, even in writing Spirographing v1.0, I learned a lot about these types of curves, and I hope that some intrepid students will explore my code and see how it works. I know that many teachers will give their students specific sets of equations to graph to see the cool curves that are generated, but with TI-BASIC programming, it's easier for students to experiment with parameters and see how the resulting graphs change.

Which brings me to the larger point of this news item: it's important to Cemetech and its staff that students continue to be exposed to the excitement of programming, logical thinking, and other STEM subjects at an early age, and we continue to think that graphing calculators are one of the best ways to do this. From a practical standpoint, from the moment you turn your graphing calculator on, you have all the tools at your fingertips to write programs of your own from scratch, test them, debug them, learn from your mistakes, and share your masterpieces with your friends. We feel that a number of the entries in Cemetech's twelfth programming contest embody this spirit of fun yet educational calculator programs, and Spirographing and the upcoming Graph3DC represent two more ways graphing calculator programs can take math even further. I urge you, my fellow calculator programmers, to continue to explore some educational calculator programs alongside your usual excellent games and utilities, so we can raise awareness in math and science classrooms about how valuable of a teaching tool graphing calculator programming can be.

Now, my challenge to you: Post your calculator programming success story in this thread. Long or short, I want to hear how you got into calculator programming, and how it helped you later, as a student, as a professional, or as a person.

Download
Spirographing v1.0

The way I got into calculator programming was quite simply really. I already knew how to program you see. I am not saying that you need to already know programming before getting started with a calculator this was just a question of my programming calculator story. Originally I got a TI-89 titanium (In addition to C,C++ and variations of BASIC I also know some assembly including m68k and in fact speaking of early programming the first time I looked at a program source code it was m68k assembly) however the screen was defective right out of the box. So I took it back and instead of getting another TI-89 I decided to get a Casio Prizm. This was a good choice as I saved money and got a better calculator at the same time.

So why did I start programming the Casio Prizm? Well the reason for doing such is the desire to do more with the calculator. Having the desire to make a program is a great way to learn. Completing said task is even better. For example I wanted another game for the calculator so I port open jazz jackrabbit to it.

Well you see calculator programming is not the only thing I do. Lots of things that I do on the calculator are intermixed with other programming hobbies of mine. For example I already enjoyed writing software that would run on resource constrained hardware and this gave me more opportunities to explore this. The best way to get better at programming is to program. I noticed that from reading some of my earliest posts that my programming ability and style has improved.

Despite the fact that I do more than just calculator programming I think that giving someone a calculator one that is not locked down can really inspire a person. I would also consider an Arduino or similar as something that can inspire a person. Even though I as one who has more experience programming for AVRs have my disagreements with the IDE and it's additional preprocessor (I have long switched to avr-gcc and make) it is good for beginners to quickly get started.

I will note that I am one person and everyone is different in how they will get into programming. I do however think that giving someone a device to mess around with and letting them discover programming can help.

So as for the benefits of programming they are great and many. I started programming before I was in any kind of Algebra based class. As expected this benefited me greatly although it has been quite some time so I don't really remember too many details but I think a programmer will do much better in a math class of any sort especially a calculator programmer. I know that I have done well in all math classes I have taken even well beyond Algebra I and I attribute this success due to my desire to program and learn about stuff such as calculators computers and other hardware. As a person I think that programming has helped with my self motivation and desire to learn. Also programming opens up lots of career choices. So I would say that programming has benefited me as a student professional and person.

I learned how to program my CSE at the start of last year. I had heard from my brothers that you could play games on calculators, so I was naturally intrigued. When I got a graphing calc on my own, I was debating trying to learn how to code (on the computer). When I realized "If there can be games, there has to be programming!" (and also the name "programmable calculator" ), I searched up "How to program a Ti-84CSE". TI|BD showed up on my search, and I learned from there. I only made simple programs, like menu-based RPGs and a text-based fighting game. After I had finished my last project, I wanted to get better, so I started Source Seekers. I originally got the idea trying to give others ideas on games on the Omnimaga forum. I learned all of the important stuff like map drawing, movement routines, etc to program an actual game.

After that long project, I cooled down a little bit and took a small break. After that, I wanted to get into programming again, so I thought of an idea of a utility program. I thought of my favorite utility app, CARROT, and decided to make a todo list. I searched up string to list and list to string routines, and everything that would make my program work. After I finished that, I started to work on an on-calc programmer's toolkit, which is in development now, called "Wrench". While doing that, I was thinking of another program I could create, since I knew coming up with tools would take time. I came up with the idea to create a fighting game, and now you have an explanation for "TI-Thrash".

Edit: (Forgot to add how it improved me)
It improved me as a person in many ways. Programming taught me how to think abstractly and outside of the box. It helped me to appreciate the work that some people do (think big-ticket video game companies), and that some day, I can get there. It helped improve my math skills, since I had to learn a few crazy, mathy tricks along the way, and it told me that "If I can program a game onto a calculator of all things, think of what else is possible!".


It's somewhat of a short story, but mine nonetheless.

Well it was about a year ago when I was supply shopping at Office Depot, there were several calculators and I would have gotten the TI-84+SE but I clearly remembered one of my friends telling me that he had gotten a PCSE. I thought it would be much cooler to be able to graph in color and use images. So I went home all excited about my new calculator and a few days later, I googled some games for it after I recalled having once seen my sister playing blockdude on her TI-84+SE. I attempted to download fruit ninja and Mirage OS. I was frustrated when Mirage OS was "incompatible" with my calc. I googled this and was sad to discover that there were currently no shells for the PCSE. I tried to play fruit ninja but was met with a syntax error on the first line of code. I then looked for other things including programming tutorials. The first one I found was a game called falling pixel by MDR Falcon. I copied the lines of code onto my calculator without any idea what anything meant. Later that day I was very proud about my game. However, my first game disappeared from my calculator due to an unfortunate RAM clear. Then I managed to find some basic games for the PCSE, Soduku and Scarth. I remember opening the program Scarth and seeing the name Kerm Martain and thinking "who the heck is that?". Fast forward until near the end of last school year and I was glad to finally find DCSE released. I downloaded everything I could! I began my programming by reviewing the code of other programs. At that time I had been learning some Java from youtube and the code looked relatively easy to understand. I began to code random things like displaying text and tried to make a guessing game but failed. Then summer began and I looked into calc coding more, I figured out most of basic myself and began an attempt to create a program that would accurately time a speedsolve of a rubik's cube. I remember on July fourth, I decided to create an account on Cemetech in anticipation for my first release. I created a topic which still has 0 replies . The chat widget informed me that someone had said my username in the chat and I looked over to see tifreak exclaim "Holy hell!" he then told me to get a smaller profile picture. I spent the next 30 or so minutes chatting with tifreak and I was amazed to meet such an advanced programmer. He then told me about creating a program with no lbls and I was amazed. Next he linked me to his website where I quickly reviewed all of his tutorials. I learned about repeat loops, for loops, and while loops. I programmed for about 2 days straight and learned about sourcecoder when my calculator crashed and deleted my program. I coded a better version and finally released it. I learned about contest 12 which I entered, still with little programming knowledge. After the contest, (which is about now) I began some asm but school started and I had less and less time to code.
Well then, "the story of my life" xD

I first learned of calculator programming about 2.5 years ago when I copied one down from the back of a geometry textbook. It was a simulation of the "Chaos" game, one that draws the Sierpinski Triangle. I also remember learning about Boolean logic in the textbook, too.
It took me another 6 months to actually think, What if I did something useful with this programming? So, then I started teaching myself how to program by experimenting with each command to find out what they did.
If I couldn't figure it out, I did what anyone else would do and googled it. I eventually found TI|BD, and joined up with them. I learned quite a bit from there, but then decided to look for larger communities, because that couldn't be the largest community. And this is how I joined Cemetech.
I remember how getKey completely boggled my mind, like, I could make really cool games! I made a weird Snake game, and only know do I realize how much better I've gotten, and hopefully how much better I will get.
Then, I thought, Since I could make games, I could make Pokemon! I posted my idea up here on Cemetech, and sending a message over chat. I remember KermM replying, and, like APotato said above, I was amazed by Kerm's skill! He was THE expert, and he talked to me! After I talked to him (and tifreak, too, I think), I abandoned Pokemon because of their reasons, and chose something smaller. Up to know, I haven't really done anything amazing, nor have I participated in any contests. I guess this is because I still see myself as an amateur programmer and don't want to embarrass myself . I should probably make a cool game, sometime...

Programming has been helpful. It saves time in class, and gives me something to do. My Algebra II teacher wanted to learn programming, and had me show the class how to type in a quadratic formula solver. That didn't end up very well, seeing as most kids didn't know where the comma was.

Anyways, that's me. Hooray and all that.

I began programming the calculator sometime in 9th grade, mainly to store pictures of cool equations down. I couldn't do too much because, as I knew nothing about programming at the time + I thought no one in the world programmed these things, I figured most of it out on my own. that means anything I did that contained text was limited to being stored by the handful of picture variables.

but then I met someone in 10th grade, when I transferred to a new school. He didn't program calcs, but he knew general programming, and its thanks to him I learned about "strings", multiple arguments, etc. he also helped me with other languages on the computer.

Later on, I joined cemetech, with only some of the fanciest commands being unknown to me (mainly string manipulations, since they're hidden in the catalogue).

As far as any educational value besides general programming and math manipulation, the TI calculator has helped me realize my aptitude for game design, and has helped me just think about things better in general. it may have even saved my life, since I was at a really low point, and what better way to circumvent the endless cycle of bad problems by staying up late, coding?

I had this old computer that I was learning how to program some sort of QuickBASIC with. Then I started digging around in my basement and found a TI-82. I found some programs online for it and really enjoyed them. I read through the manual, using the samples from there to kind of learn how to do things, though I still couldn't really make anything useful. Then I found these stickman animations of all sorts of lever ways a stickman could die (I wish I could find them now, but haven't had any luck). I started copying those and making my own, and that kind of got me started into actually programming.

Now I'm a professional software developer with lots of responsibilities and stuff. Take note here, TI: Having a programmable calculator that I was able to take with me and program on helped spark my interest in software development, and now it's my career.

Edited for privacy reasons.

Kerm...

It's not as great as yours, but I made this like half a year ago: Spyro

When I was in 8th grade, there was a kid that I knew that did a small amount of programming (basic labels, menus, text). I thought it was pretty cool, and my aunt swapped me calculators (she had a class that required only a scientific calc).
I started into it a little, with text based mazes, ect. I wrote programs for my math classes. That year ended, I had to give the calc back, but I had to get a graphing calc for 9th grade. I bought a SE, I new enough then to know that the SE had a little more memory. I started getting into games a little, programming a few more math programs, ect. I found Cemetech, but didn't really get into it, until I found Kerm's Book "Programming the TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus". Since then, I have been actively using the calculators to program games, enter contests, and overall use them for math.

A long long time ago, in a school far far away..


TIFREAK

Episode 1998

A boring start

It was a time of great strife in the summer of 1998.
tifreak was at a friend's house and learned of this
device with a small screen that one could program
games for. Taking his hard earned money, he
ventured out into the world and purchased this
mystical TI-83. After looking at information on
the horridly slow internet of the time, he found
information about how to program simple things
directly to his calculator.

After a few months, he found ticalc.org, and saw all
the games available, and yearned to learn more. His
research led him to a site of great knowledge, a vast
treasure trove of ancient knowledge. It was known
as The BASIC Guru, and much was gleaned from
those pages.

A game was made, using simple menus
to create an RPG. It was bad, and required
something better. After playing a fun RPG
called Final Fantasy X4, he set out to
build a game like it in spirit. After a failed attempt,
he learned more from the Guru, and accepted a
challenge; to use no Lbl or Goto to build a game.

After many days of long labor, his prized game
finally came into being. With the creation of this,
it spawned many more programs and games,
and continues to push his resolve into bettering
his skills as a programmer.

I did indeed see that! It's really nice work, but the parent in question was looking for something where you could adjust the parameters of the cycloid equation, and it didn't look like yours got into that sort of mathematical depth.

These are really great stories so far, everyone! I can tell you that the things you're posting will make their way to the proper channels, so if you haven't posted how calculators got you into programming yet, please do so soon.

My first two exposures to graphing calculators were in elementary school:

• I had a friend who borrowed his older brother's TI-83 for our gifted enrichment math class, and we would take turns sneaking in rounds of Movax's Spaze Invaders.
  
• My parents were the youth-group leaders at my church for quite a while, and usually led retreats to our family place in Maine (a location which has also hosted Cemetech Staff retreats ) over winter break, and I got to tag along even when I was technically too young for youth group. One of my friend's older sister brought her TI-83 to work on some math homework, and I managed to get my hands on it hoping for another dose of Spaze Invaders. Sadly no such fun was to be had, but I ended up spending hours drawing pictures on the graph screen and trying to make "cool" graphs
  

In 9th grade, I saw a review of the 84+SE in the "new gadgets" section of my Popular Science magazine, and instantly began lusting after it. I saved up 2 months worth of allowance, and my Christmas money to be able to buy it for myself and replace my TI-30xa. I'd already learned a bit of BASIC by hacking on friend's calculators during Latin class. A few months later I wormed my way into the good graces of the Cemetech and UnitedTI communities, and the rest, as they say, is history.

My primary focus, after a brief flirtation with level-creation for Mario and hybrid BASIC, has been on pushing the limits of BASIC's capacity for graphics and algorithms / data-structure implementations. The technique I am probably best known for pioneering is the use of stat sprites, which, to my knowledge, I am the inventor of.

Alright; my first exposure to graphing calculators was back in 7th grade, it also happened to be my first programming exposure. I was flipping through the manual that had come with the calculator and saw that there was a few example programs, such as a Coefficient Guessing program and a Serpinski's Triangle program. I tried making the serpinski triangle because it looked really neat and I wanted to show off to friends in my math class etc. I had no idea that the catalog existed or that tokens even were a thing. So I typed out every token with capital letters and thought that I was doing it right. For example; line( was now LINE(.. Did it work? Not at all. I had a bunch of letters that did absolutely nothing. I was stumped. I deleted the program and tried again. Still nothing. So I went to my math teacher; which was a scary thing to do, she was a witch. Looking back on it now, she was alright, as I might not be typing this if it wasn't for her. Anyways, I showed her my calculator and the program I had tried to draw. And she had the exact program on her calculator except for hers worked. She showed me how to access different menus to get the right tokens I needed. It made much more sense.
After getting that dumb triangle onto my calc, I felt like I was a master programmer and I looked at the guessing coefficient program in the book and changed it into a guessing game. I used that manual to learn what the different functions did and what arguments they took. I manually read and labored. All alone. Until I found ti-basic dev; which reminds me, I haven't logged into that account in a very long time. That website was the gold mine to my younger days. I figured out how to connect my calculator and download programs off the internet, which quickly led to me being the source of calculator games at the school. Thus giving me the nickname calcman.. Which is the name I first registered my account here on Cemetech. I gained popularity with this technique. I programmed my first snakes games and first helicopter game and became popular off of those. Around 9th grade I really struggled with coming out with good stuff. I hadn't really learned anything in a while, so I moved over to xlib. I loved it. I made a bunch of games but never published them online, I just passed them out to friends. About half-way through the school year I stopped programming. I don't know why. I hated being a noob, and I knew thats what I was. I stopped for at least a year. And rejoined Cemetech and Omnimaga as zeldaking. Ready for a new start. I tried picking up z80 asm, with a bit of success. I haven't gone back but I liked it. I programmed using axe, but to this day, basic is my favorite. I have tried coding python, lua, c++, c, z80, ti-basic, prizm basic and have done some scripting with html, css, jquery and javascript. I have to say my favorites are c++, ti-basic and python.

KermM, We still have to hear your story!

This is a bit fragmented but its a rough account of my experience with calc programming and such. There is loads skipped over and missed (I could seriously write half a book haha), but its a small insight for anyone who can be bothered reading it .

My story starts in the late 90's when I was a youngster and got my hands on a TI-83 graphing calculator. I always had an interest in gizmo's and the like so the calculator was really cool in my eyes. After messing around drawing pictures and such I realised that the calculator actually had a lot of built in functionality. I didn't have much programming experience, though I knew the basics and began messing around with the oncalc BASIC editor to make simple programs and math helpers etc. People were passing around BASIC games like race and falldown for example and playing these in math class was fun.

Then everything changed ...

Someone got a hold of a different game, Spaze Invaders.

The graphics were clean and the speed was amazing! "What, how, who?!". A friend (and resident school genius) said that obviously the game was coded in assembly. We had limited access to the internet at school back then (I know, right?) and I had to 'yahoo' ti-83 assembly and found tid-bits of information. I finally stumbled upon ticalc.org which had a lot of resources as well as tutorials like AsmGuru for the TI-83.

Like some coders today I charged into assembly coding underprepared. I messed with examples and made some small programs but I really didn't understand it that well. At this point I stagnated for a while where I would mainly download and play new games and was quiet from a programming perspective. I never made anything of significance and was on the verge of giving it away.

Then things changed again ... !

Simply put, grayscale. I stumbled upon a demonstration program on ticalc.org that would allow you to view images on the TI-83 in grayscale. "Eh?!" I thought, "The LCD is black and white?". To me, this was even more impressive than assembly games in general. This was doing things that didn’t even seem possible! The cleverness of flashing portions of images at different rates, taking advantage of the LCD refresh etc was remarkable. But the images would flicker and bit and as mentioned, it was only for images. "Would this be possible with games?". A short while later I discovered the IRC channel #tcpa. Back then, this was where all of the legendary titan's and forefathers of this community hung out. One person in particular was Kalimero (Tijl Cossemans). He was the author of many things including a different kind of grayscale routine. An interrupt driven one that used masks to help eliminate flickering. Working on from this another user Duck (Durk Kingma) had released a test version of a library that made grayscale easier, the GPP (Grayscale Programming Package). Durk was a member of a 'programming group' called MaxCoderz, and they had a forum. I signed up and my interest was piqued. I downloaded the GPP and simply had to figure this out. I simply must learn z80 assembly. I grabbed all of the information that I could and began reading - from the start this time. I had downloaded some graphics tools, CalcGS for example and began drawing grayscale sprites and tiles, for a 'dream game' that I wanted to make (I never thought I would be able to pull it off). With the GPP I was able to easily draw and move the sprites onscreen. There was a speed hit, but it was acceptable and for the grayscale payoff - worth it! My next hurdle came in the form of tilemaps. None of the example code made sense, since the examples I had were specialised. It wasn’t until I realised that it was really just 2 for( loops that things clicked. (This was when I realised I could prototype in other languages and then translate once it was working). I made a very simple, nonscrolling tilemap and the foundation for my first ever actual calc project 'Desolate' was born. With the self-satisfaction of rapidly learning I charged ahead with the game. I came up with a story, puzzle ideas, items, enemies and even made a topic on MaxCoderz about it. The support was fantastic, people were offering great ideas and lots of coding help. Duck was very happy that his lib was being used. But there was a problem. A problem that a large percentage of coders face; I had slacked off. The exciting parts like coding the engine were mainly complete, but the content wasn’t. I had entered a rut and the project was in danger. Then one week I got really ill. I had felt bad about the game but didn’t have the motivation. Then MaxCoderz emailed me asking if I wanted to join their team. It was amazing that this group of great coders wanted me to join them. I accepted and the motivation to finish was returned. I created a 'room editor' to speed up the content process and powered through it. Soon enough the game was done and I was glad to see that many people enjoyed it. It received positive reviews on ticalc.org and came runner up in POTY.

After that I dove deeper into assembly coding. Concerned with the slower speed on grayscale in games I embarked on creating various grayscale routines of my own. Jim e sprung up and had some great ideas which led to lots of improvements from the interrupt side of things (leading to his own library, RGP). In the end I created dozens of different grayscale libs, with 4lvl and even 8lvl grayscale optimized so much it fit inside the confines of a fastcopy routine. I started a few projects like Smash Bros. and Mario but unfortunately those faded away.

It wasn’t until a breakthrough BASIC programmer Kevin Ouellet joined the community that things took a twist. BASIC was frowned upon in the community, no way could it contest with the might of assembly - especially for games. Well Kevin proved that notion wrong with some fantastic pure BASIC games. I remember someone on the UTI forums wondered if it would be possible to draw a sprite and a simple tilemap from a BASIC program with the help of an Asm lib. I did a few tests and made a library called zBase. This wasn’t actually released, but it showed some promise I thought. Omnicalc was out and it had loads of great features, including sprites. Kevin had used this to great effect so when he mentioned that he would like a lib that had tilemap features, the ability to store PIC's as well as use bitwise logic with images - xLIB was born. In reality the lib was created exclusively for Kevin and his games, but soon other programmers wanted to use it and there were loads of great ideas for feature requests. The lib was a massive hackjob to be honest, but it worked and I was glad that it was helping people created games - very rewarding. It was great to see the functionality mirrored in DCS and also see the creation of other similar libs as well.

After xLIB, many years went passed and I knew I didn’t have the commitment to complete a large scale project due to life and stuff, although I wanted to. I started many projects, completing only a few but learned a LOT, but mainly stuck to helping out other people with coding and stuff on forums like MaxCoderz, Omnimaga, UnitedTI and on IRC.

Since then I turned my attention to other subjects for the calc. Grayscale had been conquered - now for the next phase - 3D. Long story short I have been working on 3D engines on-and-off for a while and ended up with some useable demos and such. There is a lot of math involved and whole lot of code to control a small number of filled polygons in 3D. For the calc it’s pretty sweet.

There was a period where I actually spent too much time on my PC coding and being on IRC and looking at forums and such. These were dark days really where I didn’t achieve much with my projects, nor did I in life. However things changed when I met a girl and I realised that a good social/computing balance would actually make me a much more happier and more importantly, more productive person. I diversified my programming expertise and picked up other languages quite a bit more easily than I had before, due to my calc experience. My job gave me exposure to proprietary software systems and such. I did a lot of investigating and managed to leverage a lot of existing knowledge to get ahead at work. However calc coding was never gone.

With the release of the 84C my interest in calc coding has once again risen. I always wanted to rewrite xLIB to handle certain things more efficiently, and this was the opportunity. A colour lib for a fresh new calc would be pretty handy in my eyes. Kerm and Cemetech were the main hub for all things 84C, so I began hanging out here more regularly. Kerm was working on a version of DCS for the 84C and was including his own Asm libs. Although xLIB was a standalone APP, I thought "Why have competing libs?" So I put the idea to Kerm to see if he would like xLIB integrated into DCS. Kerm was quite pleased with the idea and it was good for me since motivation to complete the project was high since I had too much respect for Christopher to let him down. Kerm did amazing work with DCS and was rewarded POTY 2013 - with xLIB tacked on I felt like I had contributed to the success as well. In all honesty it was the closest to a collaborative project that I had been involved in, a rewarding experience .

Sadly this past month I suffered a string of device failures which has seen a decade of work and hundreds of calc projects and experiments lost forever. In my time I have created 3,4,5,7,8,9,11 lvl grayscale routine library's (with tilemappers and sprites for each), 3D point, wireframe, solid & colour engines, mode7 tests, hundreds of tilemapping and sprite routines, lots of barebones games demos (C&C RTS test, 7 different Mario’s (scrolling & 2.5D), Sonic, Metroid, Fighting games, Smash Bros, 4 Racing games, bluetooth utilities, various Asm libs and more) that I've forgotten and never mentioned to anyone, let alone the large array of graphics and game mock-ups and such ... so it sucks, but that’s the way things happen sometimes. I do have more recent stuff backed up, so it isn’t a total loss however.

In life programming has bought me great success thus far. For my job - as many of you likely are - I am the go to IT guy. However more than that I have been able to optimize a lot of processes at work (some drastically) through custom utilities, databases, spreadsheets and even a large interactive inventory planning tool. This has earned me around 5 big promotions in a couple of years and I'm afforded a lot of freedom in my role. This was achieved through work/life/coding balance along with patience and respect for the process. But there is no doubt that at present, life is good, because of a calculator I got in high school .

I am very happy the TI-84+CSE got you excited about calculator programming again. I would say we won that POTY together, personally. Now, my story, taken verbatim from my first book:

When I was 13 years old, I received my first graphing calculator. It was Christmas, and my biggest present under the tree was a TI-83. I was thrilled. I first used it just for math, but over several months, I became more curious and discovered that I could write programs directly on the calculator. The guidebook included with the calculator didn’t really help with programming, other than demonstrating an interesting Sierpinski Triangle. Undeterred, I set off to teach myself calculator programming, although I never thought of it in such definite terms.

I first learned to display text on the screen and then to make simple animations. I discovered that I could also ask the user for input and thus make simple math programs to check my homework results. Soon classmates began passing around arcade games they had found for their calculators, so I dug into the source code for those games and found out how they worked, using my new skills to create games of my own. Over the years I grew more competent, including learning to write z80 assembly, a more complex but much more powerful language than TI-BASIC. I started an online community around graphing calculator programming called Cemetech (pronounced “KEH-meh-tek”) that thrives as a hardware and software development haven to this day. I continued to pursue programming as well as my lifelong love of hardware and electronics. I earned two degrees in electrical engineering and one in computer science; I’m now working toward my doctorate. I credit much of my love of programming and engineering to those first faltering steps with my graphing calculator.

Also, one more bit of calculator programming success that I forgot to include in the first post: my fianceé developed a crush on me about two years before we started dating, because she saw me sitting on the floor in the hallway of our high school with my 84+ plugged into my laptop typing away, and thought it was unbelievably cool.

I was introduced to graphing calculator programming when I saw my friend, TurquoiseDrag0n, displaying some text on his calculator screen. I became interested in making my calculator do awesome stuff, although at the time, that amounted to drawing pictures.

In the time since, I learned TI-Basic and started making actual programs. Though they always remained, for the most part, simple and quite useless, I've had a few finished and good projects. Then I got into assembly. Though I've never actually succeeded at an asm project, i figure if i stick to something, one day i will :p