Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: Eeems on January 23, 2010, 12:04:29 am
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We have added a new subforums for all TI-BASIC subroutines. So far only mine and one of ti-newb's are there. The purpose if this subforum is to make it easyier to find any subroutines you may need and to show off any you make.
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Nice, could we move other BASIC tricks there too in the future? I wonder if it could be a forum for TI-BASIC routines and tricks, such as the undocumented stuff (and maybe even glitches)?
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Sure, that would be a good idea.
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Oooh yay! This is a great idea! Can't wait to add some things i know, and maybe learn some things i don't ^^
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Great! I can't wait to find stuff to add myself. :D
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Good idea! This will make another nice searchable source for TI-BASIC stuff.
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Ty! I know! That's what I was thinking :p
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Plus it's a good idea since a lot of us do TI-BASIC over here. In the future I guess a z80 assembly and maybe even ARM assembly sub-forum might be a good idea too if our ASM userbase grows a bit more.
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Yeah that would be a plan for the future. I wonder. Should I learn asm now that I have limited access to a calc? Because it would be easier to code for it right now, with an emu and an IDE.
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I guess it could be an idea, if you have other coding knowledge such as C (TI-BASIC is not enough most of the time). You could also maybe learn ARM assembly for TI-Nspire stuff
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yeah...well I don't know C, the only other languages I know are PHP HTML a little bit of JS and Python. So I might start sometime...
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Ty! I know! That's what I was thinking :p
It's so cool! It's such a great idea.
I wonder. Should I learn asm now that I have limited access to a calc? Because it would be easier to code for it right now, with an emu and an IDE.
Yes! Eeems, that's brilliant! Do you think you will try?
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possibly, I need a good tutorial though...28 days doesn't really help...
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It's the best, though. :)
To be honest: my first try failed as well. Try again later. When you really understand the first 4-5 lessons, the rest is a piece of cybercake.
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Well I understand the basics (with a little refresher) but I'm having trouble with program flow, and getting things to work right. It's a whole new way of doing things. Calc84 had agreed to help teach me so I'm happy about that :p
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Could you ask calc84 if he could teach me too?
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Heh, there was a time when i was trying to learn how to program in assembly, and I used 28 days as well. I actualy got as far as programing a character that you could move around the screen with the arrow keys! But the reason I never really got into it was that i like programing on the calc, and even the Basic compilers arn't handy enough. I'll just stick with Basic for now :P
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Asm is easy once you get the hang of it, but it can take a hell of a time to code something that is simple in basic... If you need to do hard math, you should stick to basic, if you want speed, go for asm.
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It can be harder for certain people. It's easy to say it is easy when you learned it yourself, but some narrow-minded people think their life experiences is everyone else's, and some think everyone is exactly the same as them. It just doesn't work like this. It just depends if you have the brain for such low level languages. Some people may be better at game designing than coding. I personally tried learning ASM 3 times, two attempts of which were very serious. If you cannot get the grasp of languages like C, Java or Python or even web languages, you may have serious troubles at ASM. It is even worse when you only know TI-BASIC to begin with. Even ASM in 28 days states you should know lower level languages before attempting ASM.
EDIT: I also remember Iambian stating a few times that making an ASM RPG can be a major PITA compared to TI-BASIC. I just never can remember why. In BASIC the only thing to worry about is not running out of RAM (or archive) and write down what each variables or list elements do in case you forget all of them.
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Yeah it's a little hard to grasp some of it.
Silver: sure, you could ask him too if he is on while irc while you are.
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Didn't Calc84 work on an ASM tutorial a few years ago? I remember he was writing it with BASIC programmers that had no other knowledge in mind. Or maybe it was Iambian?
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Hmmm, a tutorial of ASM to TI-BASIC programmers... The better approach in my opinion would be teach everything from the ground. Teach the low level thinking. Thing that in 28 days tutorials is not explicit.
I had, too, the idea to do an ASM tutorial accessible to all, even people who know nothing of low level. I don't know if I shared the idea. But never actually did any serious writing. I just have an index of what the tutorial would look like.
TI-BASIC doesn't seem to help in nothing, except some mind practising.
After learning ASM, I think C will be easy to tackle. :) Never tried or intend to know soon. At least it is useful to understand why exists number value limit and loss of accuracy on PHP and Python numbers. But understanding is not mandatory, you can just memorize one or two rules.
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I never got past day 15 of 28, but knowing that much has helped me a lot with C++. Likewise, the more I learn in C++, the more I understand Asm. Plus knowing Ti Basic has helped me with C++. Also, the more I learn in Asm, the more "How the Calc Works" makes sense to me. It's great how everything helps everything else.
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The whole problem is in getting the grasp of low-level thinking. There's not much use in trying to write a tutorial specifically for TI-basic programmers, in my opinion. (no offence intended) It would be better to teach, as Galandros said, right from the ground. Basically, if you can do bit math and you have a reasonable idea of how a computing system works, you should have little trouble learning those low-level languages, provided 4 things: good attention span :), time for learning, time for coding, and time for headaches...
DJ is right though: some people indeed are better at designing than at coding.
And, as ztrumpet said, even if you never get far in asm, you did learn some about the basic structure of a computing system, which is of great help while learning new languages like C or C++. (speaking from experience here; I just didn't have the time, nor the motivation to get far into C. I do want to get fluent in it before I go to university, however...)
(on a semi-related note: I'm sure there are people in the BASIC world right now who are far more intelligent than I, but are kinda 'frightened' by the look of the language :) )
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Well, the issue though with the current z80 ASM tutorials is that none were written with visual people in mind, neither people who have some reading comprehension problems like me (example: at school I had 75-90% scoring in everything except french reading comprehension and gym classes. Even in french essays I had higher score). You'll be given examples of code that absolutely have no concrete use at all, and be told to understand these, then have to read a "TL;DR" text about it. Everyone is different. Some people only learn from concrete examples. This is why it took me 1.5 month to get the grasp of most essential TI-BASIC functions: the TI manual barely had any concrete example of useful code and that's all I had access too (no internet and computer at home). The only reason why I managed to learn is is because it's closer to english language than assembly is and the TI manual BASIC doc was written in small sentences, no massive text to read. I also have trouble understanding other people code even in BASIC, so even reading source code doesn't help me much.
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Very interesting point... I hadn't thought of that.
Btw, ztrumpet: day 15 ("advanced" math) is the hardest lesson of the tutorial after 23 (interrupts). I skipped both of them, at first, and didn't get back to them until way later when I already had a fair grasp of the language. (cheating works :P ) You pretty much don't need the routines described in day 15 to understand the rest of the course. They come in handy when you start writing code independently, though.
(Personally, I never made any serious use of interrupts...)
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Well, the issue though with the current z80 ASM tutorials is that none were written with visual people in mind, neither people who have some reading comprehension problems like me (example: at school I had 75-90% scoring in everything except french reading comprehension and gym classes. Even in french essays I had higher score). You'll be given examples of code that absolutely have no concrete use at all, and be told to understand these, then have to read a "TL;DR" text about it. Everyone is different. Some people only learn from concrete examples. This is why it took me 1.5 month to get the grasp of most essential TI-BASIC functions: the TI manual barely had any concrete example of useful code and that's all I had access too (no internet and computer at home). The only reason why I managed to learn is is because it's closer to english language than assembly is and the TI manual BASIC doc was written in small sentences, no massive text to read. I also have trouble understanding other people code even in BASIC, so even reading source code doesn't help me much.
Interesting. Just an example:
When I was learning PHP, I though the PHP documentation and manual was not that great as they say. So I followed w3schools tutorial that is much more oriented to more practical examples.
When I revisited the PHP manual that has a more "programmer" and experienced view of the language, I realized it is an excellent tutorial after all (and a superb reference of the language, too), for more experienced people in programming.
I think it is a good time for writing a new ASM tutorial because of the renewed interest.
Very interesting point... I hadn't thought of that.
Btw, ztrumpet: day 15 ("advanced" math) is the hardest lesson of the tutorial after 23 (interrupts). I skipped both of them, at first, and didn't get back to them until way later when I already had a fair grasp of the language. (cheating works :P ) You pretty much don't need the routines described in day 15 to understand the rest of the course. They come in handy when you start writing code independently, though.
(Personally, I never made any serious use of interrupts...)
Something identical of that happened to me, too!
After I learned, I though in many experiments I could do to understand the concepts learned. Like using Cabamap (a integer math operations APPS in RPN), to know how to get decimal numbers with integers.
I have to do some voting in some replies. This went to a good discussion, even if it is a little offtopic. :)
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Galandros, I completely agree :)
I'll probably do my so-called "final scripture" at school about Z80 programming. (unfortunately for you all, that means it will be in Dutch) It will certainly give me a better "view" of the Z80 structure and so on, so maybe I can give this a try later on. (EDIT: "this" means "writing a tutorial about 83+ Z80 programming")
One single problem: I'm going to have to find a teacher capable/willing to supervise me... :S