Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calculators => Topic started by: TheNlightenedOne on January 06, 2013, 07:41:34 pm
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What's the best calc for programming (especially on-calc)? ??? I already have a TI-84+SE, Nspire Touchpad Non-CAS, and Nspire CX CAS. I'm open to any brand of calc.
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The TI-84+SE is pretty decent for on calc programming, especially given ASM libs and the Axe Parser project.
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Yeah, defenetley the TI-83+/84+ series, as the support nativley assembly code a lot of stuff has been made for them, like axe parser, awesome basic libs (xlib, anyone? or batlib :P) other languages (grammer) and there are also on-calc assemblers for that calculator :D
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z80 has the most support, programs, and programmers, but I prefer nspire, myself. With ndless of course. :P
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TI-89/92+ of course!! ;)
Ranman runs before he gets his --- beat!
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Depends what you're looking for.
If you want to have a big (relatively speaking—we're still a niche community in any case) audience, go for the TI-83 Plus series. I'm not sure if that color model coming out might change this though, since we already know programs won't be compatible between the color and non-color models.
If you want good specs and experience in a language you might use in the future (on other platforms), go for the TI-Nspires. They've got the best hardware by far of any calculator series, but more importantly the language you'll be using are Lua and C, which are both desktop-computer languages. If you choose to do that, I'd suggest making games for the CX and keeping them compatible with the non-CX models instead of just making games with the non-CXes, since color Lua games work fine without color anyway (the colors being automatically mapped to grayscale).
And if you want to appease the wrath of Ranman and help revive the 68K scene, go for the TI-89s! And you can use C too, so see points above ^
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And if you want to appease the wrath of Ranman and help revive the 68K scene, go for the TI-89s!
Well... You got some good points Deep.
I personally love the 68K calcs. 188Kb RAM available to user -- no page swapping, native support of 32 bit integers, 68K BASIC is very powerful (still slow), 68K assembly is easy, and powerful C support. And you get decenct LCD specs (160x100 TI89, 240x128 92+/V200)
For Z80 calcs: their BASIC is powerful but slow as well, Z80 assembly is not as straightforward, limited RAM requiring page swaps. These limitations can be fun to work with though. And now you have... Axe which is pretty darn cool!
For nSpires: not too sure about these bad boys. Great LCD resolution. LUA programming language -- since I am a C/C++ guy, I dont care for Lua.
You could go for a Casio 9860 or Casio Prizm. 9860s have good LCDs specs, 64Kb RAM, BASIC and C languages available. Prizms sound like a middle ground between 84/89 series and the nSpire.
My next calc may indeed be a Prizm.
Ranman runs again
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...Or make a program that connects to the internet and have on the internet a C or lua program running that interacts with the calc, that way you still get the languages that'll give you a bonus later on
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It depends of your standards IMHO. I love my TI-84+ but if the line at which you start considering game graphics decent is Crysis 2 instead of Super Mario Bros, then you might as well go for a TI-Nspire or a Casio PRIZM. (and no, calculators can't run Crysis, unless it both came out on OnLive and that OnLive was ported to the TI-Nspire)
-The TI-84+ has by far the largest amount of ways to program it (Grammer, Axe, TI-BASIC, ASM libs + TI-BASIC, ASM and the less popular C, RPL, EzASM and TI-Power) and is quite easy to program in certain languages, but it has the lowest hardware specs.
-The TI-89 is the same way, but almost nobody program for it anymore.
-The TI-Nspire only has Lua, ASM and C for game programming, TI-Nspire BASIC being extremely limited for most games), but it's the most powerful platform (it even has a Game Boy Advance emulator and can run Doom). It's also pretty locked down so if you have the latest OS it is very hard to use ASM and C programs.
-The Casio PRIZM can do Lua, ASM and C, along with TI-BASIC, but non-ASCII graphics in Casio BASIC are slow on it. It's not as popular on Omnimaga for programming but a bunch of members got one and it has quite a lot of potential.
-The FX-9860G is also quite good, but about 90% of the programming community is French, so barely anybody use it on Omnimaga. It has the same languages as the PRIZM if I remember.
Personally I prefer the TI-84 Plus, because it has the largest audience and library of programming. Also it can be quite entertaining to push the small hardware to its limits.
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For nSpires: not too sure and these bad boys. Great LCD resolution. LUA programming language -- since I am a C/C++ guy, I dont care for Lua.
Hey, those have C too :P
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Just wanted to remind you guys that in his original post he asked which was best for programming on calc. I think hands down you have to say that it's the ti-83+ series(ti-83+/se ti-84+/se. You have basic,asm,axe,grammer, plus tons of libs to use(xlib, celtic 3,batlib etc). It's also the platform people are most familiar with.
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Just curious, which is better? Casio Prizm or fx-9860GII (or fx-9860GII SD)?
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Just curious, which is better? Casio Prizm or fx-9860GII (or fx-9860GII SD)?
The Prizm by far. But I also like the 68k. If you buy one, then I'll be happy.
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I'm actually considering an 89Ti atm... suggestions?
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The thing with the 86k is that the community is rather dead, I just got one for calculus and want to know now how to program it aside of BASIC :P
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The prizm is a good calc for programming. The nspire has a little more going for it currently though. With linux you can do pretty much anything with it.
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Just curious, which is better? Casio Prizm or fx-9860GII (or fx-9860GII SD)?
The 9860 is the older of the two, and it has quite a few good programs. However it recently went through a hardware change so some of the old programs still might not have been made compatible yet.
As a calculator it's pretty good, after using it in a primarily-z80 math class it's better/faster in just about every way I can think of compared to the TIs aside from the small community and the resulting small library of programs/ways to program :P
The Prizm does pretty much everything the 9860 does, and then more with the color screen. it's kind of new, just being a few years old, but still has a sizable community and growing number of programs. It hooks up to the computer like a usb drive, so no linking programs needed. It doesn't look too bad either ;)
Both have C, lua and an implementation of Basic.
Edit2: and asm :P
Basically it depends on your priorities, (math vs gaming vs programming vs etc) but the Prizm seems to be the more popular of the two around the community atm.
Edit: just as a note I don't follow casio stuff too closely, I'm just saying what I know having both of them :P
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The TI-68k series has several alternative high-level languages which can be programmed on-calc, especially NewProg (which is probably the closest thing to Axe Parser).
They've got the best hardware by far of any calculator series, but more importantly the language you'll be using are Lua and C, which are both desktop-computer languages
* TI's proprietary Lua has significant two-way incompatibilities with standard Lua: it's unable to deal with files and processes, and it has a platform-specific event-driven API;
* C on the Nspire with TI's OS is sub-par compared to most platforms. However, of course, C/C++ with Linux is largely on par with other Linux platforms.
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And if you want to appease the wrath of Ranman and help revive the 68K scene, go for the TI-89s!
Well... You got some good points Deep.
I personally love the 68K calcs. 188Kb RAM available to user -- no page swapping, native support of 32 bit integers, 68K BASIC is very powerful (still slow), 68K assembly is easy, and powerful C support. And you get decenct LCD specs (160x100 TI89, 240x128 92+/V200)
For Z80 calcs: their BASIC is powerful but slow as well, Z80 assembly is not as straightforward, limited RAM requiring page swaps. These limitations can be fun to work with though. And now you have... Axe which is pretty darn cool!
For nSpires: not too sure about these bad boys. Great LCD resolution. LUA programming language -- since I am a C/C++ guy, I dont care for Lua.
You could go for a Casio 9860 or Casio Prizm. 9860s have good LCDs specs, 64Kb RAM, BASIC and C languages available. Prizms sound like a middle ground between 84/89 series and the nSpire.
My next calc may indeed be a Prizm.
Ranman runs again
I love the 68k series as well, and would prefer it to revive again, but it looks like it's a lost case. :(
However, like Lionel Debroux just mentioned it also has newprog, which is kinda like AXE, and can be programmed on-calc in the regular Ti-basic editor. To see some Newprog examples look here: http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/newprog/
The only dissadvantage I can currently think of is that it's community isn't big.
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How do you program in NewProg?
DO you need to downlaod this and put it on calc? http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/426/42635.html
/me needs to get a silverlink
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I think it's similar to 89 BASIC, Axe and C, but I,m unsure. It's done on-calc like Axe, but you need to use the Newprog Shell to launch programs, unlike Axe, which can produce nostub/APP programs.
Also, the FX-9860G series is now seriously problematic in the way that Casio changed the processor recently so most old ASM/C programs no longer work and if you make some you need to take in account cross-compatibility between each calc. I noticed lately that most new FX-9860G releases are written in BASIC too.
I really recommend a 84+, PRIZM (and please don't leave Omnimaga entirely if you switch to PRIZM dev lol, like most PRIZM coders did :P), the Nspire or 68K, but only got for 68K if you don't mind programming for a calc that is in constant danger of being discontinued.
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prizm all the way.
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How do you program in NewProg?
DO you need to downlaod this and put it on calc? http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/426/42635.html
/me needs to get a silverlink
Yes, you have to send that to your calc indeed.
Like DJ_O said, it's also necessary to run the program. You have two programs for newprog; the one that compiles your TI-Basic file to a newprog file. Then you can with the second program run it by typing: newprog("name_compile_source").
I don't really find it annoying to be "forced" to have newprog on your calc to be able to run those programs, but I can imagine that some may do.
The language is similar to TI-Basic(well at least the 68k basic), but it does have a cool command "basic'. With this you can have your source partially with TI-Basic, however I think it'll in that case be as slow as TI-Basic.
I'd recommend trying first a bit to get used to the 68k Basic, but I don't think it's an absolute necessity, since I guess you know z80 basic.
Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy your Ti-89 a lot.
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Can you somehow assemble the 89 on-calc?
If yes, is it hard to learn? :P
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So like an oncalc C compiler or ASM assembler? I'd like to know too
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So like an oncalc C compiler or ASM assembler? I'd like to know too
There is one being developed for the fx9860...
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Can you somehow assemble the 89 on-calc?
GTC can compile some C code on-calc, and IIRC, said code can contain assembly :)