Silly things you did as a noob

[Builderboy]

We were all noobs at one time, whether you want to believe it or not But making mistakes is all part of learning, so share all your hilarious mistakes here!

Ill start

1) I used the product() and sum() commands to access List elements instead of L1(N)
2) I used masses of pixel tests to check a tile type

[BrandonW]

I wrote Windows for the TI-81.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Each room of Illusiat 1 used to have their very own code, all linked through Goto/Lbl, misused, resulting in ERR:MEMORYs after moving through only 20-30 rooms and making the game about 18 KB large total instead of its current 10 KB (pics included)

[Deep Toaster]

This is a great idea!

I used If inString(Str1,Str2) and inString(Str2,Str1) instead of If Str1=Str2.

1) I used the product() and sum() commands to access List elements instead of L1(N)

Just a few days ago, I had been using the combination sum(mid(list,n,1)) instead of list[n] to access list elements on an Nspire.

[Quigibo]

I used to code in z80 on calc with no editor.  I just printed out some papers with all the complete instruction list, ram locations, bcalls, and key equates.  I then used the basic editor and typed in the hex code using the calculator to actually compute the offset for the labels, something I would have to change every time I added something new to the beginning of the code.  It was pretty cool that I was able to do that looking back on it, but wow, I was such a noob.  Lets see, this was back in... 2006 when I first discovered the assembly language.

Even worse, It wasn't until the very start of 2010 that I started using emulators or and 8xp converters.  I wasn't typing it by hand, don't think that!  I was taking the hex output from the computer assembler, copy pasting it to TI-Graphlink, sending it to the calculator, compiling it, testing it there (I didn't use emulators), and then sending it back when I wanted to upload the files to the internet.

[Deep Toaster]

I once made a 20 KB game in which I had over a hundred labels, many of which used If-Then statements with no End. Actually, I didn't know how to use End back then.

And come to think of it, I actually did that seven times -- six times with 20 KB text-based RPGs, and once with a Jeopardy imitation (called Leopardy) that wouldn't let you get halfway through the game because of the memory leak

[matthias1992]

I used to write tremendous amounts of IF's for nealry everything. I know boolanize (if that is a word) as much as I can. ooh and you now what is cool to do in spare time? coding in eso...something languages like: whitespace, Aargh!, BrainF** and l33t.
if you ever thought assembly was hard...

[Deep Toaster]

Okay, the following is a VERY VERY dumb thing to do. Don't try it.

When I first got my calculator and discovered TI-BASIC, I immediately started working on that 20 KB program described above. I didn't know about groups at the time, so I saved it from RAM clears by archiving. Needless to say, I quickly found my first GarbageCollection message staring me in my face. Unlike some other newb programmers who would instinctively know it's a bad thing (which is the right idea), I thought it was interesting, and after finding that it was caused by unarchiving and archiving repeatedly, I did that, just to see the
Garbage
Collecting…
message several times a day, every day (idiot).

[ztrumpet]

Let's see.  Attached was my first game ever, and I made it about one week after I started programming.  Download and shudder at the code!

On a side note, it took me a year and a half to discover loops.

[DJ Omnimaga]

I think it took me about 6 months, but I'm not sure anymore. If I recall, I discovered For( first, so I had stuff in my code such as

For(Z,0,1
0->Z
code
If <goes outside the screen>
Goto LBL
End

Or stuff like that

Then I discovered about While/Repeat

[calcdude84se]

I actually discovered other programming languages and learned a good amount about them before getting my calc.
The best example I have is that I always used to close my parentheses, brackets, etc.
Also, what may actually be better: I never changed the graphscreen settings. Ever. So code for drawing lines would have lots of deltaX's and deltaY's, Xmin's and Ymax's.

[thepenguin77]

One of my first programs was to get revenge on some kid. I wanted to make his calculator never turn off so that his batteries would last a few days. I went through the flash debugger and searched for every single 76h (halt). Then I made a program to replace them all with zeros. Here is the source:

Code: [Select]

     LD     A,00
     LD     ($02A3),A
     LD     ($08E9),A
     LD     ($0AA8),A
     LD     ($3E81),A
     LD     ($3F8F),A
     LD     ($3F53),A
     LD     ($3E68),A
     LD     ($3683),A
     LD     ($362F),A
     LD     ($3629),A
     LD     ($3623),A
     LD     ($361D),A
     LD     ($3533),A
     LD     ($3527),A
     LD     ($347F),A
     LD     ($32F9),A
     LD     ($32F3),A
     LD     ($312B),A
     LD     ($2F51),A
     LD     ($2F14),A
     LD     ($2EBA),A
     LD     ($2E79),A
     LD     ($2E5B),A
     LD     ($2E55),A
     LD     ($2E4F),A
     LD     ($2736),A
     RET
Needless to say, it didn't really work right. Not only did he not have an 83+, or os 1.16. But I don't think you can change the OS that easily.

[calcdude84se]

that ld a,00 should be xor a
And yeah, changing the OS involves writing directly to flash. Besides, not every interrupt causes low power mode. It'd be better to change every "ld a,$11 \ out (03h),a" to "ld a,$0B \ out (03h),a" (I guess nop'ing it would work too)
You probably already knew most of this

[_player1537]

When I first got my calc, I programmed Counting programs constantly (start at 0, and add one each time.  They later got more advanced, and after it was above 10, it would start adding 2, after 100, 3, after 1000, 4 (etc))  I would bring my calc into Mellow Mushroom (a pizza/italian place) and work on my counting programs there ^^

Then I wrote a program that converted between metric units, standard lengths, standard volume, standard weight, temperature, and time.  It ended up being over 9000!! err actually, about 9000 bytes, and was filled with labels, gotos, if Condition:Do something blocks, My metric conversion part looked like:
if StartUnit = "K"
1000->A
if StartUnit = "H"
100->A
if StartUnit = "D"
10->A
...
if EndUnit = "K"
1000->B
if EndUnit = "H"
100->B
if EndUnit = "D"
10->B
...
StartNumber * A / B ->EndNumber

All my friends were crazy about text based rpgs using over 9000 labels/gotos, I offered to make a nice looking menu system so they just have to do "Text To Display ->Str1:PrgmMENU and it would do all the menus for them, but they insisted on Disp "Line 1":Disp "Line 2":Disp "Line3":PrgmGETKEY:If A=1:goto AA:If A=2:Goto BB...etc...

[apcalc]

When I was first learning TI-BASIC, I originally thought For loops meant that the code inside the loop would only be executed if a certain consition was true, for example if x was less that zero, the code inside the loop would be executed.  Thankfully, I never actually tried to write a program using this concept.