Back in February, Cemetech reported on the promotion of the previous Executive Director of Worldwide Marketing & Product Strategy, Peter Balyta, to president of TI Education. At T^3 2014 in Las Vegas, we had several opportunities to interact with Dr. Balyta, and he reiterated his mission to work with the community as well as to encourage programming wherever it intersects with and enhances TI's mission. Dr. Balyta generously spoke to me(Kerm Martian) this past Friday, answering questions about the present and future of TI's technology, its role in promoting programming and STEM, and his thoughts on the calculator enthusiast community. I was very pleased with what he had to say, and the fact that the following 4,000-word transcript is an edited and abridged version of our conversation (!) should belie the depth of our discussion.

If you lack the time or patience to read the full interview, a few important quotes are worth your time. For example:

Over the last few years, as I've been more involved in product strategy and then going into worldwide marketing, I've worked hard to help the organization see that the community can really help us, and that we need to work more closely with the community along the positive lines I've discussed with you, adding value to the products, and I believe that that far outweighs the negatives. Most of the people in the community want to innovate, they want to improve their programming skills, they're very competitive people, and the vast majority is working on positive innovation. Those are the initiatives that we're excited about.

[W]hat you guys do is extremely valuable as well, whether it's programming or just showing what's possible. I refer to it as "extending the capability" of our platforms. That is very helpful for us to see what else can be done today and what should we be thinking about tomorrow. While I can't comment specifically on any roadmap plans and especially not what the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition will look like in the future, what I said earlier, that there's an important customer base there, it's one of our two hero product lines, and we're committed to improving the customer experience, and in my mind that includes performance going into the future.

In some parts of the world, programming as part of STEM regardless of whether TI is involved is really taking off, and I'm happy to see that. We're partnering more and more with folks to have kids start programming early on, knowing that all kids could have a platform for programming right there in their hands. They can do it in schools, they can do it at home, on the bus, waiting for lacrosse or soccer, and we're seeing that take off in parts of the world, for example in France. The TI-89 and now the TI-Nspire CAS platform is really taking off as a programming platform, and we try to encourage that wherever we see it. We're starting to see some of that here, and we're excited to recognize that. If you have ideas on how we can encourage that more, let me know.

Dr. Balyta spoke at length about TI's educational mission with its graphing calculators, including the classroom material and activities and professional development that it offers. We touched on the ever-popular STEM Behind Hollywood program, including whether that program might feasibly find a home on the TI-84+CSE. Perhaps most importantly to the community, Dr. Balyta discussed his views on the value of the community to TI (and vice versa), and how we can continue to build a close positive relationship in the future. I thank Dr. Balyta once again for his time, and I'll look forward to continuing to liaise between Cemetech, the community, and TI Education in the future on the behalf of our many skilled and passionate programmers, students, and teachers.

A link to the full article on Cemetech can be found Here

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98196116/PythonAxeCompiler.zip

That's the alpha give it a whirl

So back on topic: Speed mode can be implemented and has been hacked in and works with no problem. the code functions fine on my pc.

Issues we seem to be having sometimes we get file send errors and have no idea why. This seems to be(for some) because of people having a CSE rom loaded onto wabbit before execution. Will be adding checks for that and will be adding an option to send a rom of your choice (for those who want to primarily use a different rom or what ever the case may be)

And that's the plan DJ just have to talk to the third parties involved as I really don't want to make an IDE my self as I don't even use AXE! (source coder support is not going to happen unless we make a true PC side axe compiler)

Fast modes will be implemented soon I have to test some wabbit core changes and then implement the changes into python script and then add the command line arguments. Wabbit In theory supports a large amount of different speeds but If you set it to fast it likes to thread lock but I think I will allow up to ~800% ( I also need to make a few changes for supporting events. So that I can properly catch when the program is compiled right now its a horrible hack)

I can make provisions todo so but sadly I don't really have the motivation to make a full blown ide

Thats exactly what im doing then Based on what axe does I will handle it from there. I might end up only supporting the latest axe version and newer for error support because of that. I have to talk to runer112 about how to get the info for errors from the app whilst its errored out.

Ok to start the name is a little misleading. Its a python script that uses wabbit's com object library to interface with wabbit and compile the program then export it out of wabbit. Still fast and effective though.

Right now its just a simple POC python script but in the end it will have a command line invocation and a GUI with everything you need on it. Its pretty simple only requirement is that you have a new beta of wabbit emu installed and you have used wabbit emu before (it grabs your ROM path from the registry).

Honestly I do not know who would need/use this BUT its pretty nice and works fast and it honestly was a good way to test out the com object library for wabbit while we attempt to get it past alpha into a almost beta state!

other things it will support are different axe versions and projects with multiple source files I just have not coded those in yet.


So thoughts anyone have any actual use for this project?

Nope refunds in.  Just have to make new Lables and get to the post on time. Sorry for the delay the this has been pissing me off since i started with it ......

I don't have much to say against this other then as a whole we decided the way of changing the post id's was best.  If he hasn't already he will be making an api/tool set for people to fix the links on their end. The decision was made between us having a maintenance nightmare or a quick fix on any site that is willing to cooperate.  We decided less work for everyone == better.

As for the rest of the post we have made our decisions and have done our best to make them clear.  I can't speak for them but cemetech seems to understand.  We hope ti-planet will to.  It's our site our rules.  Does not mean we are trying to be assholes about it we are just doing what we feel, as a team, is in omnimagas best interest.  Eeems acts with us and us with him.  Just for the record.