Author Topic: New Subforum  (Read 26468 times)

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Offline Silver Shadow

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2010, 12:57:37 pm »
Could you ask calc84 if he could teach me too?
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Offline Builderboy

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #16 on: January 24, 2010, 01:03:20 pm »
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

Offline mapar007

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2010, 01:08:34 pm »
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.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #18 on: January 24, 2010, 02:55:32 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2010, 02:57:27 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Eeems

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #19 on: January 24, 2010, 03:56:08 pm »
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.
/e

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #20 on: January 24, 2010, 03:57:55 pm »
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?

Offline Galandros

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #21 on: January 24, 2010, 04:18:18 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2010, 04:19:43 pm by Galandros »
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Offline ztrumpet

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #22 on: January 24, 2010, 06:34:57 pm »
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.

Offline mapar007

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #23 on: January 25, 2010, 11:43:15 am »
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 :) )
« Last Edit: January 25, 2010, 11:45:07 am by mapar007 »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #24 on: January 25, 2010, 02:15:19 pm »
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.

Offline mapar007

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #25 on: January 26, 2010, 01:45:48 am »
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...)
« Last Edit: January 26, 2010, 01:49:24 am by mapar007 »

Offline Galandros

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #26 on: January 26, 2010, 09:13:24 am »
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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Offline mapar007

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Re: New Subforum
« Reply #27 on: January 26, 2010, 03:07:42 pm »
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
« Last Edit: January 26, 2010, 03:09:32 pm by mapar007 »