On Wednesday October 21st, Texas Instruments published a set of online tutorials for the TI-84 Plus CE and CSE called TI Codes to help students and teachers get into TI-BASIC programming. These tutorials essentially start students in a position of just getting their shiny new graphing calculator, and having never been exposed to any programming language previously.

This approach seems to work well enough, and they start the reader out learning how to create new programs, and how to edit them. From there, they transition to teaching the I/O commands, variables, loops, conditionals, and graphics aspects of the language. Each section, called units, then has various skill building sets and an assignment to generally guide the reader towards a goal, without giving them all the code necessary to complete the task, leaving it to the reader to figure out.

Once they've gone through the basics, they can go onto some more advanced tutorials, written up by our very own Christopher Mitchell(KermMartian)! He covers a few, slightly more advanced topics, like creating a guessing game, creating event loops, and making a snake game.

For you teachers, you have access to the lessons, downloadable resources, and a mailing list to join to get the latest updates about the TI BASIC language.

While this is a great resource to get students on the path to programming and possibly building them up to a fantastic career, the tutorials themselves are merely the first step into a much broader range of usage for the language, and only covers a small fraction of the commands.

TI is hosting a webinar covering the TI Codes tutorials on November 10th, and the speaker is none other than the man who wrote the "10 Minutes of Code" activities, T^3 instructor John Hanna. Attending this webinar gives you a chance to win tickets to attend the T3 International Conference. Register for this event here.

If you make it through those tutorials and have more questions you can't find answered in TI Codes, make sure to ask around on the forums!

More Information
TI Codes website
TI-BASIC Webinar on November 10, 2015.

I just checked there and I'm going to be there more often. Why? Because I haven't heard of Repeat Loops until then Very Happy.
Eightx84 wrote:
I just checked there and I'm going to be there more often. Why? Because I haven't heard of Repeat Loops until then Very Happy.
Sounds like you need a certain book to take your TI-BASIC programming to the next level! Alternatively, just play with the commands in the [PRGM] menu and try to figure out what each one does. The [+] (Catalog Help/more info) feature on the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition and TI-84 Plus CE are particularly helpful for that.
Quote:

Code:
:P+1-X(P=X➔P)


Not impressed. Kerm, they should leave this stuff to you.
lirtosiast wrote:
Quote:

Code:
:P+1-X(P=X➔P)


Not impressed. Kerm, they should leave this stuff to you.


I already contacted TI about this. I have yet to hear back though.
lirtosiast wrote:
Quote:

Code:
:P+1-X(P=X➔P)


Not impressed. Kerm, they should leave this stuff to you.
Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence in my abilities and thoroughness. Smile I would have enjoyed leading a project like this and think I could have done a good job, but I suspect that TI is understandably leery about a non-TI employee spearheading such a significant effort. Obviously I think we have a great deal of expertise and experience here that we could be offering in a more substantive capacity, including serving as a more official resource.
I dont really like their tutorials either, compared to Kerms book. They basically tell you what each function does by itself, and then some examples. And considering that Kerm wrote the Beyond the Basics section, I think that you are all right about doing a great job with this project. But I mean, BASIC is such an easy language, anybody can pick it up no matter how they are being taught. Rolling Eyes Good Idea

Side Note, I resent there not being a color graphing calculator in the emoticons menu.
The actual problem is that you won't ever be able to even write a number guessing game by yourself if you don't want to. Programming is not the thing you can learn by memorising commands like vocabulary and noone can force you to learn it well like for example they can with maths.

I just want to say that the part of the students, that never liked maths and such stuff also will never actually learn to program.
*bump* Just a reminder that tomorrow night at 8pm is the TI Codes webinar. I especially want to encourage the Cemetech staff to attend, perhaps chime in with some good TI-BASIC answers if appropriate, and maybe win free T^3 2016 admission?
so, who say the TI codes hour of code announcement? sounds pretty cool.
Caleb_Hill wrote:
so, who say the TI codes hour of code announcement? sounds pretty cool.
*Saw, rather? Yeah, it seems cool, although I'm a little jealous that they succeeded in getting one featured, considering that I wanted to host a calculator-centric Hour of Code lesson ourselves.
KermMartian wrote:
Caleb_Hill wrote:
so, who say the TI codes hour of code announcement? sounds pretty cool.
*Saw, rather? Yeah, it seems cool, although I'm a little jealous that they succeeded in getting one featured, considering that I wanted to host a calculator-centric Hour of Code lesson ourselves.

Yes, I saw that thread.
Sorry for the typo.
To clarify, were you going to submit something directly to the hour of code group, or give it to TI to submit under your name (because it is for their calculators, after all...)
Apologies for the necrobump, but I just noticed that TI has created a TI Codes section for nspire BASIC programming. This tutorial is nowhere near the depth of the TI-84+CE section, and does not include anything like "Beyond Basics," but it might provide a good starting point for beginners. I am also happy to report that TI responded to my email regarding the aforementioned errata, and that the issues have been resolved.

  
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