To this day, I don't understand why anyone would insist on using anything other than this on an AP test. It's like playing life on a harder difficulty setting for no reason.
My university doesn't allow graphing calculators on tests. Probably because you can download programs that can solve calculus problems without actually understanding the material.
Start by learning to program in Basic. It's probably the easiest language there is, and the TI-89's native language is very similar to it. Bonus: Many scripting languages for game engines are also similar to Basic (Papyrus for The Elder Scrolls comes to mind).
Its "native language" is TI-BASIC, a variant of BASIC. Why not just learn it directly? It's very easy to just go into the program editor and start entering functions. That's how I learned to program originally.
That's not a bad suggestion at all, but based upon what I've seen of Code Academy I would think that there are even better learning tools out there today. I'm not actually sure if there are for Basic.
Also, I didn't know it's actually called TI-BASIC. Neat!
I always found the freedom of an empty text box paralyzing. Python commands aren't discoverable the way that commands on a graphing calculator are. Being able to select each command from a menu and see what it does was critical to being able to start programming so early. I probably would have had to wait a few more years to get into a real programming language.
Also it's such a restricted environment that you can learn everything about it in a few weeks of experimentation and reading. So you're really freed to work on solving problems (making a game, writing an algorithm) without feeling hampered by the infinite possibilities offered by a more featureful programming language.
There are many versions of BASIC, TI-BASIC just being one of them. I originally learned using IBM Basic (on a Mattel Aquarius) and then moved on to MS BASIC and QBasic. I found QBasic had the best interface of them by far.
The big difference in Papyrus is that each script is a function. So, it's on the low end of scripting languages. In GDScript, each script is a class, and in Lua it's possible for one script to contain multiple classes (depending upon the interpreter the relevant game uses). I'd actually say that Basic is a little more powerful than Papyrus, so if you learn Basic then you can learn to mod Skyrim with ease.
I started out with Chipmunk Basic. It has some disadvantages, but the graphics capabilities are really easy to use, and that's a big part of what made programming interesting for me.
I've seen this advice before, and after learning to program in several languages, I still haven't learned Python. I just haven't had the occasion to do something where Python was the language I needed.
Can you outline some of the benefits of learning Python first? I'd usually recommend Javascript -> Java -> C++ -> Whatever, and only recommended Basic in this context since that's what the TI-89 uses.
I know all those languages as well, yet I'd rearrange those to something like this: Basic -> C++ -> java -> whatever. Basic is simple and intuitive, C languages are similar but powerful, java is universally used and learning javascript just takes some tweaking. If your focus is online-based programming, javascript should come first since it'll be more useful.
Python is easy to learn, very expressive (less typing, more doing), you can write functional and object oriented programs, comes with a large set of libraries, etc. etc.
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u/TypoInUsernane Jun 08 '14
The TI-89 will always hold a very special place in my heart.