Omnimaga

Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on June 02, 2011, 04:27:22 pm

Title: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 02, 2011, 04:27:22 pm
Texas Instruments has started to contact various TI community members or websites in the past two days, including KermMartian and ticalc.org, about the opening of the TI-Nspire platform to Lua development. This is the e-mail ticalc.org got:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/147/147404.html

The Lua information page is located at http://education.ti.com/nspire/scripting

Although we had known for a short while that TI has decided to open the platform more, the fact that the tool is now on their own website makes this even more official. Also, it appears that for now it will remain free, given that it's easily download-able there.

Hopefully this should eventually make Lua programming on the TI-Nspire more popular. Let's hope that TI eventually opens the calculator to ASM or C development and that the Lua development tools remain free.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: apcalc on June 02, 2011, 05:30:06 pm
Interesting, and nice to see TI beginning to cooperate with the community! :)
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Munchor on June 02, 2011, 05:34:47 pm
Did Omnimaga get an email? We're like the most active community developing Lua :P Oh and TI-Bank!

Either way, it's nice to see TI interested in us and let's hope they allow C and ASM too :D
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 05:35:09 pm
I'm almost scared of this. I think I'm a little too paranoid about this
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Ashbad on June 02, 2011, 05:35:55 pm
I don't think we got an email (yet).  I wonder if we will, we make the most games, which TI despises... however we're also the most active TI community site on the web.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 02, 2011, 06:03:02 pm
Did Omnimaga get an email? We're like the most active community developing Lua :P Oh and TI-Bank!

Either way, it's nice to see TI interested in us and let's hope they allow C and ASM too :D
Nope, but maybe they doN't know us yet. While we are very active, it doesn't mean they know us much. After all, Detacheds Solution was less active than MaxCoderz and UTI back then, yet it's DS that was affiliated with TI.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 06:07:22 pm
If they don't know us they can't censor us. So thats a good thing
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ben_g on June 02, 2011, 06:14:10 pm
wait, is TI now releasing official programming tools AND documentation on their own site O.O?

that's really the last you'd expect from ti

are you sure this isn't a trick?
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Ashbad on June 02, 2011, 06:15:36 pm
It's not a trick, in any way at all.  TI is giving us candy to follow them, using the old "Come to the dark side, we have cookies!" approach.  I think they expect we make mostly math programs with few or no games.  If so, they're obviously very stupid and they need to hire a fresh brace of new Public Relations staff.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 06:16:20 pm
Its true they are.

I'm going to stay paranoid about here intentions. We can't be sure its not a trap yet. what its a trap for who knows
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Ashbad on June 02, 2011, 06:19:47 pm
I actually think it's more of a "trap" in the sense that we buy their merchandise over Casio's.  Lua support will bring together a decent amount of engineers for sales as well, as Lua isn't an uncommon language in the Math/research and IT industry.  And who knows, maybe they'll drag in a few teachers as well...

The thing is, I still don't really care how great their Lua support is, all they really had to do to make a public SDK was to edit out some more confidential parts of the company's SDK and package it with cookies and a ton of advertisements and emails (that I would personally send to the recycle bin).
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: TIfanx1999 on June 02, 2011, 06:21:09 pm
I'm almost scared of this. I think I'm a little too paranoid about this
^This. Be afraid. Be very afraid. What ARE you up to TI? >-.-<

It should also be noted that TI has not acknowledged TIcalc.org for years, ever since the CD fiasco. So it seem particularly odd to me that they would contact them.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 06:27:53 pm
My paranoia is going up the more I found out about what TI has been doing. I scared they are trying to make us compliant which we will never be. or maybe they are having us develop for lua but then as soon as we have a big game ndless or something they will take it out to appease the teachers. Or they'll change it just enough to break everything we've done
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Ashbad on June 02, 2011, 06:33:22 pm
I actually think they're being sincere with keeping it free and non-licensed.  However, Lua is very slow and limited compared to Native C or ARM assembly, it's more in comparison with 84+ BASIC versus z80 assembly.  I'd compare original Nspire BASIC to and 84+ Brainfuck interpreter made in BASIC compared to z80 assembly, so you can get even more of an idea of my thoughts ;)

If we attempt Ndless, then all they would have to do is block the stack overflow problem from the Lua interpreter, which would only require either putting an error after something like 32 stack pushes or not allow for recursivity.  On the bright side though, TI's programmers are quite inept and I doubt they know anything about how Lua works aside from how to port the standard interpreter to ARM platforms.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: calcdude84se on June 02, 2011, 07:37:41 pm
TI doing something that the community appreciates... They haven't done that in a while.
Hopefully this is the start of a new era of friendliness from TI, but perhaps I am just to hopeful :)
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: TIfanx1999 on June 02, 2011, 07:49:27 pm
TI doing something that the community appreciates... They haven't done that in a while.
Hopefully this is the start of a new era of friendliness from TI, but perhaps I am just to hopeful :)

I've been around the community for a while, and I kind of feel the same way, but I'm still really unsure what to think. It's been SO long since TI and the community have even remotely been on the same page, and I'm wary of them burning us again. I'd guess many others that have been around the community for a long time feel this way as well.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 02, 2011, 07:55:32 pm
Yeah the issue is that they were on our side since 1997, then 10 years later they stopped and went the way Sony did. Now they're slowly going on our side again, but who knows if they won't start controlling what we do with our calcs again in a few years?
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 08:01:44 pm
I've only been in the community for the past year so I don't have the wel of kindness for TI only suspicion
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: calcdude84se on June 02, 2011, 08:03:05 pm
DJ, we can at least enjoy it while it lasts 8)
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: pianoman on June 02, 2011, 08:09:00 pm
I've only been in the community less than a month, but we can always hope this is the new version of TI. :)
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 08:10:27 pm
We will all hope that pianoman, just some of us are unable to believe it after all TI had one
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: Dingus on June 02, 2011, 08:56:15 pm
We will all hope that pianoman, just some of us are unable to believe it after all TI had one

I have to wonder if this about face is the result of a change in management at ti?  If so it will probably last.  If not, then it may be just a temporary condition.  Another consideration is will this change allow interesting games for the nspire that students will play in class the way it used to be?  If teachers complain TI will have to do something to keep them happy. 
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: ruler501 on June 02, 2011, 09:07:33 pm
TI will forever follow the teachers. We really need someone(uberspire) to make a dev calc that is completely open. We don't need it for tests just for development of fun games and utilities
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education websi
Post by: JustCause on June 02, 2011, 11:43:28 pm
Meh. The worst they can do is take it away. I'm happy.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on their website
Post by: JosJuice on June 03, 2011, 02:15:29 am
Did Omnimaga get an email? We're like the most active community developing Lua :P Oh and TI-Bank!

Either way, it's nice to see TI interested in us and let's hope they allow C and ASM too :D
Nope, but maybe they doN't know us yet. While we are very active, it doesn't mean they know us much. After all, Detacheds Solution was less active than MaxCoderz and UTI back then, yet it's DS that was affiliated with TI.
I'm pretty sure that they know about us. There have been many links to us on the Nspire Google Group when they were discussing stuff like 3.0.1. However, they might have reasons for choosing to not send an e-mail to us...
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: Stefan Bauwens on June 03, 2011, 02:49:21 am
This is sounding good. :)
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: Deep Toaster on June 04, 2011, 03:55:23 pm
I've only been in the community for the past year so I don't have the wel of kindness for TI only suspicion

A few years ago you'd need only send them an email and they'd give you any info you wanted. And when you made a useful developer's tool/guide, they'd post it publicly on the education.ti.com site.

:'(
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: ruler501 on June 04, 2011, 03:55:53 pm
I can't even imagine modern TI doing that
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 04, 2011, 05:21:20 pm
We will all hope that pianoman, just some of us are unable to believe it after all TI had one

I have to wonder if this about face is the result of a change in management at ti?  If so it will probably last.  If not, then it may be just a temporary condition.  Another consideration is will this change allow interesting games for the nspire that students will play in class the way it used to be?  If teachers complain TI will have to do something to keep them happy. 
Yeah I'm wondering about that too. Maybe with the other strategy sales were poorer or they got a bad reputation due to the bugs.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: pianoman on June 04, 2011, 05:39:35 pm
Although, in all fairness, you can't really blame TI for following the teachers... they are a business, and the teachers and schools do make up most of their revenue.
Not to say I condone of that, of course...
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: JosJuice on June 13, 2011, 11:24:46 am
I noticed that they had made a comment on my YouTube channel (probably at the same time as when they sent friend requests to other people).

Quote
Hello JosJuiceZ138 - thank you and your friends for visiting the TexasInstrumentsCalc Channel! Please check-out our new, color TI-Nspire CX handheld overview video now available.

The comment was marked as spam by YouTube. :P
When I visited their channel, I disliked every video... Except for those that had ratings disabled, which was around 50% of them.
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: kyllopardiun on June 13, 2011, 12:04:24 pm
When I visited their channel, I disliked every video... Except for those that had ratings disabled, which was around 50% of them.

RFLOL, but I think they deserve it!

Come on, they should stop being against us, to work with us.

but,sadly, TI's a teacher-oriented industry ...
Title: Re: TI e-mails various community members and puts Lua tool on TI Education website
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 22, 2011, 06:10:26 pm
Lol I bet they'll eventually send me plenty of advertisments :P