Author Topic: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...  (Read 4709 times)

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Offline Lunar Fire

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Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« on: December 16, 2013, 12:57:01 pm »
Hi guys,

As my screen name says, I am Lunar Fire. I am an electrical engineering student in Quebec. I stumbled across this site by stalking Juju, one of your programmers.

I used to do calc programming when I had a TI-83+. I programmed both in TI-Basic and in z80 assembly. However all of my code is lost somewhere in limbo, probably on my lost calculator and my friends calcs, and in corners of the internet.

I am currently a developper for a french Zelda fansite called Puissance-Zelda. We are preparing the new version of the site (V8), which should be relased some time next year. Summer is an early estimation, but my knowledge of deadlines tells me that it probably won't be completed by then. I probably won't get involed a lot in your projects for now but I would love to after my other projects are done.



I do have one project for those of you who might be interested, but for now it is at the stage of vague idea. The idea would be to develop a mobile application that would allow for basic programming of math functions with the same freedom that TI-Basic gave you.

Why did I have this idea? Because I remember that when I was still in high school, most of us had a programmable calculator. I also remember that some people with very basic knowledge of programming knew how to create programs to calculate the functions that our teachers were showing us. This is the experience that would be cool to recreate on mobile phones. The simplicity of a language like TI-Basic that would allow us to create micro-applications, like taxes calculation or simple geometrical calculations, without having to download countless "utility-like" applications from the App Store.

I know that calculator emulators are available on the App Store, but those don't give me the same feeling than TI-Basic did. What could be done is an application with a basic TI-Basic-like language and built-in mathematical functions that would allow you to create small programs like you could do on TI. And probably add stuff like graphing, fixed-point  - fraction conversion, etc...

So, what do you guys think of this idea? Does something like this already exists somewhere on the internet (maybe I just didn't find it)? If not, would some of you be up to the challenge?

Later,
Lunar Fire
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Offline Sorunome

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2013, 01:00:49 pm »
Good stalking skills :P

Anyways, have some peanuts
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Offline Juju

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2013, 01:06:52 pm »
Welcome on Omnimaga! Yeah, I know you're stalking my blog a lot and I often mention Omnimaga there... Glad you signed up here, that you have some projects you can share up here and have some peanuts!

!peanuts

And to answer your question, yes, at least on Android phones there's scripting languages, there's also TI-83+ emulators (dunno if Wabbitemu is still being developed for Android), but I would like to see TI-BASIC interpreters.

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2013, 01:13:01 pm »
Heya and welcome to the forums. :)

Glad to see another quebecer and former calc programmer around :) (also I know juju IRL, although I original met him here at first :P)

By the way your project seems interesting. Also if you ever felt like coming back to calculator development, there are some emulators available nowadays that are quite reliable (although most TI emus requires a ROM, the official HP Prime emu doesn't) and some tools to develop online or off-calc. :)

By the way, I think that someone once made a TI-BASIC like thing in FreeBasic, but I never got the chance to try it. It's somewhere on this forum in older threads. EDIT I think it was mainly oriented towards ASCII art games, so I'm unsure if anything complex was feasible.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2013, 02:30:25 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Lunar Fire

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2013, 05:06:45 pm »
Thanks to all for your warm welcome.

JuJu: I have seen SL4A before, but that's not quite what I have in mind. One of the major things that efficient in TI-Basic was that it was simple and it was made of symbols (and not text) which made writing code faster (you don't have to type keywords) and less prone to common mistakes (like closing brackets or typos). This may seem insignificant but it decreases time spent debugging a lot.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2013, 11:51:09 pm »
True about the faster code typing lol. I made 6 RPGs in half a year once in TI-83+ BASIC (even if one suffered some data loss once).
* DJ Omnimaga remembers the day where he could type faster on a calculator than a computer keyboard too.


On a side note, according to what juju was saying on IRC, you were from a MLP fan club where he is, right? Because over here there are quite a lot of MLP fans and there are even people who made Rainbow Dash Attack clones for some calculators in the past. :P

Off-topic: Habs, Nords, Leafs, Bruins or Sens? :P
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 12:10:50 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Lunar Fire

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2013, 12:26:19 am »
This whole "let's recreate Ti-Basic" idea is a long-term thing that will require a lot of planning, but I think you're starting to get where I'm going with this.

JuJu is right, I am a brony, but not a member of any MLP fan club. Bronies where I live are a rarity (unintended maybe-intended pun), so trying to gather them to some fan club seems unlikely to me. And they are all on different networks. One is only on DeviantArt, one is only on Tumblr, one on Facebook, another is paranoid about social networks, and I cannot think of one physical place where I could gather them all at once. So yeah, I didn't expect to go on a tangent about this...

Isn't Rainbow Dash Attack already a running game clone? So a clone of a clone... You get the idea. But sure, I should check out the pony games that were made for TI calcs, maybe make one of my own. (The fun has been doubled!)
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Offline Juju

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #7 on: December 17, 2013, 12:58:57 am »
Yeah, that would be pretty fun and educational to write an interpreter... You would have to write a lexer, a parser and stuff like that.

And yeah, bronies are kinda a rarity (lol I saw what you did there), but you can find them if you know where. Have you joined the Québec Bronies group on Facebook? We're 450 members and it's pretty much the MLP fan club in Québec. Also, electrical engineering... Are you in the same school as Playerdotexe by chance?

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Offline Lunar Fire

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2013, 02:19:19 am »
Simple answers to simple questions, no and no (we're not from the same place)
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #9 on: December 17, 2013, 02:30:32 am »
Yeah in juju's case, he's from BroniesQC actually and there are some conferences or partys from time to time in areas surrounding or inside Quebec City. In some occasions they are like 8 or 10 people.

I think that calculator programmers in the entire province are even more of a rarity than bronies, though, considering juju and me are the only Quebecers to have ever stayed on a calculator forum for more than 6 months in a row in the last 12 years or so (perhaps even longer, since I don't recall ever hearing about any people from Quebec province during the TI-Files/Dimension-TI era. :P

I guess that the fact calculators are so expensive over here compared to USA (although it got better since April or so) doesn't help. In hi school, half of the people didn't have their own graphing calcs, even if it was required (minimum TI-82). They just borrowed the old TI-82s from the class.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 02:35:02 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Lunar Fire

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #10 on: December 18, 2013, 12:52:20 am »
I don't know how fond you guys are of IRL events, I personnally didn't have the chance to do any because there aren't a lot of people from Quebec where I usually go, but I might be interested in one if you feel like it (Calcs in hand for a full afternoon of coding :P).  I should also check out the BroniesQC thing on Facebook (Ugh, Facebook...).
« Last Edit: December 18, 2013, 01:09:01 am by LunarFire »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #11 on: December 18, 2013, 01:11:42 am »
Since I am not a brony I don't really go to Bronies conventions but I often go to concerts (usually heavy/power metal or punk) with juju and sometimes hockey games or bars. However, the latter is more rare due to lack of bus transit service at night in our city and we live 25 km apart.

And yes I did bring one of my calc a few times when we saw each others elsewhere, such as the shopping mall, for example, which we use as meeting point when not going out late. I usually prefer to not bring a $150+ calculator inside a mosh pit. :P

Offline flyingfisch

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #12 on: December 18, 2013, 09:38:11 am »
I think it's "Hi Ho", not "Hi Huh". ;)
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Offline Juju

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #13 on: December 18, 2013, 01:13:36 pm »
BroniesQC is my blog, actually. And yeah I guess there's a Québec Omnimaga convention every week in Québec City, since we used to be like the only 2 in Québec :P You can always join us if you're in the area.

I think it's "Hi Ho", not "Hi Huh". ;)
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Pretty sure it's a reference to Fluttershy.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2013, 01:15:20 pm by Juju »

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Offline Sorunome

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Re: Hi huh... I'll introduce myself... if you don't mind...
« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2013, 02:45:15 pm »
[...]
I think it's "Hi Ho", not "Hi Huh". ;)
* flyingfisch runs.
Pretty sure it's a reference to Fluttershy.
That was also my first thought :P

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