Casio Prizm: Why TI Calc Coders Should Abandon the Nspire CX

qazz42 · Vampire Killer Joined: 07 Apr 2010 Posts: 4177

Well, with rule 4 I think that Nspire fails because it does have wireless communication. But then again, it would be pretty obvious if you have the huge wifi adapter sticking out on top.
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aeTIos · Power User Joined: 02 Nov 2010 Posts: 491

Don't forget ndless 3.1. I am replying to the first post in this thread. They did a great job, and ndless running nDoom was showed on TCAP last week.

KermMartian · Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:46:56 pm Post subject:

qazz42 · Vampire Killer Joined: 07 Apr 2010 Posts: 4177

KermMartian · Posted: 02 Dec 2011 09:23:07 pm Post subject:

Indeed, the trick is to have the CPU have no control whatsoever over the LED for it to be effective. Anyway, we're getting off-topic. Let's get back to the Nspire vs. the Prizm.
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willrandship · Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:21:40 pm Post subject:

Don't forget no sound output.

Argh: Page turn fail
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Hmm...what to put here....

CalebHansberry · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 12:33:15 am Post subject:

So Kerm, what do you think of the new Ndless for the CX? Doesn't it really improve matters?

Also, the Prizm doesn't support 83/+/84/+ grade ASM. Only C. And programming for the CX has been improving.
(note: I didn't read all the posts before this. I do not have that kind of time because I'm working on the Casio Prizm Online Training Course right now.)
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"We do not understand in order that we may believe; we believe in order to understand." - Francis Breisch Jr., "The Kingdom Of God", 1958

Qwerty.55 · Expert Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 613

CalebHansberry · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 12:50:59 am Post subject:

C seemes to be the only one anyone mentions for it. Is there a more powerful language for it than C? I am mainly saying that it doesn't support Assembly.
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"We do not understand in order that we may believe; we believe in order to understand." - Francis Breisch Jr., "The Kingdom Of God", 1958

merthsoft · File Archiver Joined: 09 May 2010 Posts: 2735

I would argue that overall C is more powerful.
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Shaun

Kaslai · Member Joined: 16 Nov 2011 Posts: 172 Location: ???, WA

If a platform supports C, it supports assembly. It's a matter of bloat, really. C is a high level language, at least compared to assembly, and with that abstraction comes that bloat. The C is translated down to machine code in the end. The reason why people don't often use C for the TI calculators is that they just can't really handle the wasted space. The prizm can though, and C is many times easier to work with than assembly, so it's the preferred choice.
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KermMartian · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 01:02:37 am Post subject:

Every device with a processor supports assembly. We have members who have written programs in pure SH3 asm. There just isn't much point when you have a good C compiler.
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CalebHansberry · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 01:21:01 am Post subject:

Obviously, when you write a program in C, it compiles into ASM. My idea of it was this: that you could program in any language, but they would all be compiled into ASM, so it seems to me that programming in ASM would give you more options than programming in a language that then compiles into ASM.
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"We do not understand in order that we may believe; we believe in order to understand." - Francis Breisch Jr., "The Kingdom Of God", 1958

KermMartian · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 02:02:52 am Post subject:

Lionel Debroux · Power User Joined: 16 Nov 2009 Posts: 416

Ashbad · Posted: 26 Feb 2012 08:28:20 am Post subject:

Might I say that no one has even mentioned Prizm BASIC? I know it's not Lua par, but it's a lot better start than the Nspire's original BASIC... people say to "let the Nspire mature", but forget how long it's been in production now, >5 years? The prizm hasn't been out for even two years yet, so I think we have a lot more to see come from it than the Nspire at this point. Comparing the Prizm hacking/development timeline to the Nspire one since ~2007, it's been opened up for C development twice as fast, and from Casio's sentiment it's almost entirely likely it'll at least stay the way it is now.
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-Ashbad

CalebHansberry · Posted: 29 Feb 2012 10:21:22 pm Post subject:

Alright, if y'all think C beats ASM, I'll give it to you. I just want to avoid a cultish devotion to either side. What I do not want is to be classified as a Nspire fan.
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"We do not understand in order that we may believe; we believe in order to understand." - Francis Breisch Jr., "The Kingdom Of God", 1958

shkaboinka · Posted: 29 Feb 2012 11:18:50 pm Post subject:

I think the only point in using assembly is when there is no good alternative, or if you just really really like handwriting the whole thing manually because then you are not bound to any mechanism and you can optimize down to the metal.

However, there is no one language that is "best" for everything, or even "best" for low-level programming. For example, though I do agree with Kerm that C is THE best language for low-level control in general, I'm designing OPIA because I feel that I can provide "better than C" for a raw z80 platform by customizing the language to be so (e.g. providing all the mechanisms necessary for full computational power, but no more than that; and then restricting code to that model. ... None of these mechanisms stray from how it would best "done" in z80 assembly)

willrandship · Posted: 29 Feb 2012 11:47:20 pm Post subject:

Another important area for assembly is where you need extremely accurate timing, like emulation.

I'm an nspire fan in that I have one Razz

but to be fair, it was before the prizm was even announced, and after ndless 1.1
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Hmm...what to put here....

Lionel Debroux · Power User Joined: 16 Nov 2009 Posts: 416

Important status update: unsurprisingly, but sadly, the head of TI's education division has made it quite clear to Adriweb, who discussed with her face to face, that the next OS version for the Nspire, will block Ndless (in its current form).

* Adriweb's original report from TI's T3 event, containing a summary of the statements of the head of TI's education division, written in French, is: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8856 .

* for an English-speaking news, see http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=12808.0 , critor's take on the event.

* in http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8857 , I've publicly released the large blurbs of informative text I spent huge amounts of time writing to top-level TI executives, in a direct communication. That was two months ago, before the first Ndless 3.1 public beta.

Not that we had any serious hope of convincing TI how they could make a win-win situation out of the current lose-lose situation, but at least, we'll have tried to take advantage of our direct contact with high-level executives at TI, for the sake of both the open development community and TI Wink

(said direct contact was kindly made possible last year, by a former TI consultant, after the release of OSLauncher and critor's tutorial)
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