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David
The XORcist!
Advanced Member
Joined: 20 May 2003
Posts: 268
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 Posted: 22 Oct 2005 07:12:53 am Post subject: |
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I have been in the community since 2001, and from my point of view,
there's been a noticeable decline of activity. Personally speaking, I am not
too worried about it; as long as there are calculators, there will
be programmers 
Nowadays, much of the community is scattered among different sites,
which may have a negative impact on overall activity.
Ticalc.org has the best file archive, but if you for example, feel like getting started with asm, there's no obvious place you can go to.
You'll have to figure out much by yourself or ask someone with knowledge. |
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Rezek
Better Than You
Calc Guru
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 1229
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 08:58:55 am Post subject: |
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There's plenty of documentation about asm, it's just you have to look for it.
Honestly, I think half of the reason people find asm hard is because people tell them it is.
The other half is because, well, it is |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 09:42:05 am Post subject: |
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Rezek, I think the looking for it is something that puts of newcomers and something that shows exactly how fragmented the community is.
Perhaps we should apply ACC's philosophy of UTI more, make UTI more into a central portal/get-together to/for/of the entire TI community instead of a TI community.
Ie. add some more beginner's guide with references to places through all the community's, maybe add a subforum for discussion of other forums, sharing TI sites, etc.
Maybe I should throw some ideas into a nice document? I think I will.
Last edited by Guest on 22 Oct 2005 09:43:14 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Rezek
Better Than You
Calc Guru
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 1229
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 10:12:17 am Post subject: |
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That's true too and unless you already know some asm it can be very hard to get google to help you.
I would agree with 'UTI more' but on the other hand I wouldn't want every site to be a part of UTI. I think it's the many different sites that strengthen the community. As I stated before; there is an upper bound on this as well. There was one point where everyone and their mother's uncle had started a programming group with two members, and that hurts the community. I wouldn't want to have every site be a subdomain of UTI. |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 10:35:46 am Post subject: |
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They don't need a subdomain here, but the sharing of the knowledge of their existence and use/goals could help.
The result being that everybody with a question could start here and either find the answer or find where to find it.
Last edited by Guest on 22 Oct 2005 10:36:39 am; edited 1 time in total |
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DarkerLine
ceci n'est pas une |
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 8328
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 10:49:32 am Post subject: |
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Arcane Wizard wrote: Perhaps we should apply ACC's philosophy of UTI more, make UTI more into a central portal/get-together to/for/of the entire TI community instead of a TI community.[post="59425"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post] Can't it be both? |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 10:59:53 am Post subject: |
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Of course, I wouldn't advocate removing all of UTI's projects. That's why I said "more" and not just "instead".
Like I said, it would probably involve some more FAQs/guides and a topic/list or two about other TI community sites in the community news subforum. Stuff like that. |
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aforsy
the leaping penguin
Active Member
Joined: 13 Jul 2004
Posts: 653
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 04:58:34 pm Post subject: |
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leofox wrote: I've been noticing the opposite lately. Yes, MaxCoderz is not getting much new projects anymore, but UTI is more active than ever. FBF is restarted, Sonic is processing nicely, Robot War is almost done, i'm even working on Destiny Realm every once in a while again. Not to mention all the new UTI members.
[post="59412"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
don't forget NimbusOS finishing up now.
personally, i would really like for UTI to be the main TI website/portal. it would be superflous to re-host the ticalc.org archives or something like that, but maybe we could have people who look at all the new programs on ticalc.org and link to the good ones or something like that. in my (admittedly limited) experience of other calc sites, UTI seems to be the most mature, accessible, intuitive, welcoming, and varied site out there, at least in terms of the forum. out archive could certainly stand some fleshing out, but there are many ways that could be changed, my idea being only one of them. a "Other Websites" subforum would also be a great thing, since then people who don't want to have several accounts could still get a synopsis of events/project on other sites. |
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DarkerLine
ceci n'est pas une |
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 8328
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 05:12:34 pm Post subject: |
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aforsy wrote: a "Other Websites" subforum would also be a great thing, since then people who don't want to have several accounts could still get a synopsis of events/project on other sites.
[post="59443"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post] That's what the Community News forum is for. Although I admit that maybe it could use some more topics/information on what's going on at other sites. |
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Jeremiah Walgren
General Operations Director
Know-It-All
Joined: 24 May 2003
Posts: 1937
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 06:27:43 pm Post subject: |
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Arcane Wizard wrote: Rezek, I think the looking for it is something that puts of newcomers and something that shows exactly how fragmented the community is.[post="59425"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
Okay, story time I guess...
I remember in late 2001 (October I think), when I first began to be interested in calculators, I really had no idea what to do in order to program them. I had a TI-83+ off and on because my sister used it a lot for her classes, but when I had a few hours alone with it I would toy around with various features. (I also read some parts of the manual when I became stuck.) That's probably where most of my interest came from - discovering how to make the calculator do things.
Then I found someone who had some BASIC games on their calculator and I had them put on my calculator. I opened them in the program editor and looked through them. I was intrigued with how the commands had been used together to make the game work. I began to spend more and more time playing with the calculator so I could make something like that. My sister became quite annoyed with me too... Oh well.
Then towards the end of November I found out about the graph link cable. The thought of being able to program on my computer and then send it to my calculator was just the best thing in the world, in my opinion. Seeing as how I was much faster typing on the computer than the calculator at the time, it would be awesome. Needless to say, it was the first thing on my Christmas list. It so happens that I had the cable a month later. That's when the real fun began.
On the CD that came with the cable, I found a reference to TI's calculator website. I decided to check that out to see what they had. This is pretty much the first time that I had ever seen assembly games before in my entire life. Up to that point I had only seen pure BASIC games. I thought it was really cool and I wanted to know how to do that. So, I began to search for ways to do that. I talked with someone at school who I knew was a calculator programmer (BASIC on the 83) and he told me flat out that assembly was really hard. (That was encouraging...) That kind of killed my enthusiasm for learning the language, but I still looked around to see what I could find. I didn't really have much success.
You see, the problem wasn't that I didn't know where to find tutorials (I discovered some at ticalc.org). The problem wasn't that I didn't know how to use a computer. I've been around computers since I was four or five (my dad has always had a computer related job). The problem wasn't that I had trouble using compilers (the documentiation helped well enough with that). The problem was that I didn't know where to go for help when I ran into problems. I noticed people would ask questions in the news articles and surveys at ticalc.org only to be laughed at by several others. I had only come across one or two forums, but they didn't have anyone who could help.
I tried checking other websites. I found references to a group called TCPA, I think it was, and went to their site to see if they could help. All it brought up was that some sort of login screen for the members or something. I had a few more encounters like that before giving up. I attempted to take up the learning again during the couple of years after that (even as recent as last summer), but I just didn't have the interest or the time that I used to anymore.
I later went on to buy an 89 and learn BASIC on that model. I basically spent my time learning BASIC on TI's calculators and figuring out how to do math things so I could help people if they ran into problems. (I actually gained a school-wide reputation as "the calculator guy" because of that.) There was one little C project I did for school, but that was just a really simple program...
Like Arcane said, looking for things is probably the most frustrating part of beginning to program. I know it was for me. If I had actually been able to become a competent z80 programmer, I probably could have turned out a couple of nice projects. But I never did. The funny thing was that once I pretty much gave up on learning assembly I began to discover web sites and groups being created in order to help the new people do just that...
Edit: And next week, chapter two of my autobiography. (That has to be the longest post I've ever made...)
Last edited by Guest on 22 Oct 2005 06:30:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2005 07:09:27 pm Post subject: |
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Sir Robin wrote: aforsy wrote: a "Other Websites" subforum would also be a great thing, since then people who don't want to have several accounts could still get a synopsis of events/project on other sites.
[post="59443"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post] That's what the Community News forum is for. Although I admit that maybe it could use some more topics/information on what's going on at other sites.
[post="59446"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
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leofox
INF student
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 11 Apr 2004
Posts: 3562
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 02:31:21 am Post subject: |
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aforsy wrote: leofox wrote: I've been noticing the opposite lately. Yes, MaxCoderz is not getting much new projects anymore, but UTI is more active than ever. FBF is restarted, Sonic is processing nicely, Robot War is almost done, i'm even working on Destiny Realm every once in a while again. Not to mention all the new UTI members.
[post="59412"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
don't forget NimbusOS finishing up now.
personally, i would really like for UTI to be the main TI website/portal. it would be superflous to re-host the ticalc.org archives or something like that, but maybe we could have people who look at all the new programs on ticalc.org and link to the good ones or something like that. in my (admittedly limited) experience of other calc sites, UTI seems to be the most mature, accessible, intuitive, welcoming, and varied site out there, at least in terms of the forum. out archive could certainly stand some fleshing out, but there are many ways that could be changed, my idea being only one of them. a "Other Websites" subforum would also be a great thing, since then people who don't want to have several accounts could still get a synopsis of events/project on other sites.
[post="59443"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
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0oruneo0
Member
Joined: 01 May 2005
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 09:54:29 am Post subject: |
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| Who would decide what is Elite and what is er... not Elite? |
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DarkerLine
ceci n'est pas une |
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 8328
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 11:05:47 am Post subject: |
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I would. 
Seriously though, it doesn't take many judgment calls to distinguish xLIB xLIB Revolution from QuadSolv v1.1 |
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Rezek
Better Than You
Calc Guru
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 1229
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 11:27:31 am Post subject: |
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Quote: Who would decide what is Elite and what is er... not Elite?
Quote: I would. :lol:
Seriously though, it doesn't take many judgment calls to distinguish xLIB xLIB Revolution from QuadSolv v1.1
'Twasn't arrogance was it? I think he meant who should decide which programs are good or not, not who would come forward to do so.
Let's not throw off such a serious question so easily. Part of being such a friendly community is accepting people. Consider someone who has just joined and submits their blackjack program only to get it rejected. This may have been their first big program and they may have worked hard on it. Their feelings are hurt, and they probably won't stick around. Furthermore, this opens the door for the people accusing judges of being biased; BASIC vs ASM *shudders*, and other arguments / fights / badness. Personally I think we should accept all programs and have a better rating system in affect, and have much better organization than ticalc.org (although they do pretty well). Examples of this would be categories for different types of games, automatically only display games with a rating higher than 5 and more than 5 votes for it (of course, new additions would be displayed at the top of each page to encourage people to vote on them... maybe only remove them once there have been 5 votes or 30 days?) with the option to display all games of any ratings; have a group of people who specifically go through and rate programs, have a 'golden' section of only extremely high-rated games, etc, etc.
More later. I refuse to proofread this for stupid ideas. |
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leofox
INF student
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 11 Apr 2004
Posts: 3562
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 11:45:27 am Post subject: |
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0oruneo0 wrote: Who would decide what is Elite and what is er... not Elite?
[post="59504"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post] I think the UTI staff team. Kinda like them ppl that feature programs on ticalc.org, except cooler. *points at Contra* |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 12:00:00 pm Post subject: |
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Rezek wrote: Quote: Who would decide what is Elite and what is er... not Elite?
Quote: I would. :lol:
Seriously though, it doesn't take many judgment calls to distinguish xLIB xLIB Revolution from QuadSolv v1.1 blablablabla[post="59511"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
Instead of donating our webspace to the cause, which every computer connected to the internet can do, we can donate our expertise and humble opinion!
Super Cool Review Archive - Here's how it could work:
Submission -> Review -> Forum topic.
Anybody can submit a program to go on the list. Submissions are named after their program name, which has to be unique, so there won't be thousands of submissions for awesome_program_x that'll scare us from reviewing it. Submissions enter a que to be reviewed by one of the officially appointed review crew (The review crew either being all UTI Members or a few UTI Reviewers. Opinions?).
After that extensive review (according to a UTI Review Model/Standard of course) a new page appears in the archive about this submission/program. It will have a short discription of the file (link to the file on ticalc.org or wherever it's uploaded, name, submitter, category, size, credits, 96*64 screenshot, etc.), then the official UTI Review, then forum member review/opinions/comments/etc.
If this already exists, sue me, I like it 10x better than upload-and-forget upload archives.
Download archive
Still for UTI downloads/programs/projects/members!
Calendar
Need more (U)TI Community events! With links to topics discussing them!
Custom staff pages
Update mine. 
Last edited by Guest on 23 Oct 2005 12:01:23 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Rezek
Better Than You
Calc Guru
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 1229
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 01:03:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Blablahbla. I was merely offering a suggestion to improve the content of a given archives page without sacrificing it. |
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Arcane Wizard
`semi-hippie`
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 02 Jun 2003
Posts: 8993
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 01:24:12 pm Post subject: |
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| I know, there's no need to explain yourself. |
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DarkerLine
ceci n'est pas une |
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 8328
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2005 01:44:05 pm Post subject: |
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Rezek wrote: Quote: Who would decide what is Elite and what is er... not Elite?
Quote: I would. :lol:
Seriously though, it doesn't take many judgment calls to distinguish xLIB xLIB Revolution from QuadSolv v1.1
'Twasn't arrogance was it? I think he meant who should decide which programs are good or not, not who would come forward to do so.[post="59511"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
I like Arcane Wizard's idea of a "review archive". that's a good enough name, IMHO |
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Community News & Discuss Nspire => Technology & Calculator Open Topic
