Oh I meant more that I was worried that former BASIC programmers who moved to Axe would start bashing people who don't learn Axe and decides to stick to BASIC and that newer programmers who went straight to Axe and barely did any BASIC would do the same as ASM coders did back in 1999-2004. This happened with 68K C, I think, but Kevin Kofler had a big influence on people back then...

Well said calcforth. I'm glad this attitude did not return in the community. Around 2006 there was also the anti-lib attitude: BASIC programmers who used ASM libraries to enhance their games were bashed because they were apparently cheating. To me it doesn't matter what is used to make a game, it's possible to create good games in any language, as long as the language has the fundamental commands/instructions to allow a good game (such as getkey or drawing tools, which Nspire BASIC lacks). Even with java and VB it's possible to create good games. I myself saw crappy ASM games and it's very possible to make crappy Axe ones. I even made one, although it was intended to be an inside joke.

Poor attitude like that usually causes programmers to not feel as recognized. It feels good sometimes to know at least one or two person like your game. Although it's best to program stuff we like, sometimes it can be discouraging if we get no constructive feedback. In long terms, the amount of people moving on to other interests can grow larger than the amount of people joining.

Another attitude I disliked was that when an assembly programmer tried something new and asked for help, other experienced ASM programmers took his ideas down saying it's impossible and they shouldn't bother trying. Result: Barely any new things (such as TI-Boy SE) were being made anymore. Few innovations can make people less interested in joining the community.

Now everyone tries all sort of new things, and look at how many releases there were since late 2009.

Yeah I remember back then we would see a Falldown or Snake clone coming out every few week. CalcGames even stopped allowing them in their archives at one point.

As for the "You should not try this" attitude, I think it had negative effects, because an ASM programmer who want to try something new will get told his idea is impossible for a calculator and to not bother and try something smaller. In the end, the person follows the other person advice so the new trick is not experimented with. Later, some people decided to try those tricks anyway and eventually the attitude got dropped, so other ASM programmers tried to encourage new ideas even if they may fail. IMHO, if you try something new, go ahead. It doesn't matter if it fails or not: at least you'll have tried. If you're new to ASM or BASIC, try to not start with too large projects, though, because the workload can be more discouraging than the coding difficulty.

And yeah quality > quantity. The large amount of crappy BASIC games versus the small amount of good ones is most likely why many people had a bad opinion of all BASIC games. Even today, there are people saying there are barely any good BASIC games out there. There are some, like Exodus and Contra 83, but they're rare.

I'm happy ticalc also split their game directories  by genre and type of games. Today, text-based RPGs even have their own category, inside the RPG folder, and I believe Casino games got a folder to themselves as well. Now all they need to do is add even more folders, for example for TI-83+ BASIC Shells that got the name Windows http://www.ticalc.org/pub/83plus/basic/programs/shells/