Is this forum dead?

[kevinkore3]

It seems like there are pretty much no new projects here. I've looked at the Omnimaga stats for post activity, and it seems like the whole site is getting a lot smaller (people probably would rather play games on a smartphone than a calculator - the decline in activity strongly correlates with the rise of the smartphone). This forum in particular hasn't really had any major projects for a while, even though it used to be relatively active when I joined in 2013.

TI will keep updating the OS and try to block Ndless. From my observations, it seems like it takes a considerable amount of work to find a loophole to install Ndless, and as the amount of people here gets ever smaller, the chance of finding a loophole will decrease. If Ndless isn't available on new calculators, there will be no new members, and C++ projects (which tend to be the most fun because they get the most out of the CPU) won't be usable, so no one will visit anymore. No GBA emulators, no crafti, etc.

In addition, nobody will create projects if nobody will use them. It seems like no one is downloading projects, which doesn't encourage programmers at all.

So can we officially wave goodbye to TI-Nspire programming? There doesn't really seem to be a good solution to revitalize this forum. It seems like TI-Nspire programming is a thing of the past now when smartphones are plentiful. It seems like the whole site, along with all the other calculator programming sites, will die pretty soon when people ditch calculator gaming in favor of smartphones.

Thoughts?

Looking at the post graph, it seems like the activity stayed relatively stable during 2013 (100 posts/day) until the end of 2014, when it nosedived to around 20 posts/day, and now it seems like it's at 10 posts/day. RIP Omnimaga. Any idea on why the post count decreased so rapidly at the end of 2014?

[CVSoft]

This place became a vacuum of culture after a lot of prominent users left.

[shmibs]

calculators are disappearing. even without what cvsoft mentioned, our userbase and the number of people doing calculator-related things in general has fallen dramatically and will continue to.

however, there are still people around here (also, hop in irc; it's a bit more active). just means that, if you want something to happen, you might have to do it yourself./

[Ivoah]

Looking at the post graph, it seems like the activity stayed relatively stable during 2013 (100 posts/day) until the end of 2014, when it nosedived to around 20 posts/day, and now it seems like it's at 10 posts/day. RIP Omnimaga. Any idea on why the post count decreased so rapidly at the end of 2014?

That's when CodeWalrus was born

[kevinkore3]

Looking at the post graph, it seems like the activity stayed relatively stable during 2013 (100 posts/day) until the end of 2014, when it nosedived to around 20 posts/day, and now it seems like it's at 10 posts/day. RIP Omnimaga. Any idea on why the post count decreased so rapidly at the end of 2014?

That's when CodeWalrus was born

Even so, at this rate omnimaga is set to have around 250 new posts in 2016, which is considerably less than the amount in 2015.
Even the numbers by month are disappointing:
January: 35
February: 24
March:16
April (over half gone): 8

[TIfanx1999]

Dead?, No. Slow definitely. It will become a self fulfilling prophecy if people don't contribute though. The only way for their to be activity is for people to work on projects and actively post. And yea, it seems Codewalrus was a large part of our specific drop in activity, though our falling out with TI Planet didn't help either. You will see that most of the members from there don't post here anymore either.

[SpiroH]

. just means that, if you want something to happen, you might have to do it yourself./

^^ That!

[kevinkore3]

Dead?, No. Slow definitely. It will become a self fulfilling prophecy if people don't contribute though. The only way for their to be activity is for people to work on projects and actively post. And yea, it seems Codewalrus was a large part of our specific drop in activity, though our falling out with TI Planet didn't help either. You will see that most of the members from there don't post here anymore either.

Yeah, it seems like none of the French users visit anymore and all of the English speaking users moved to Codewalrus. What happened with the TI-Planet break anyway? I heard critor got offended or something like that, but I don't know the details. Also, why exactly was Codewalrus created? It just seemed to fracture the community more. I noticed Codewalrus lists TI-Planet as an affiliate but doesn't list omnimaga as on (which is kind of odd, because DJ O founded Codewalrus).

I would program stuff, but I don't really have time to make any big projects, and no one is interested in small projects like maze generators. In addition, Nspire GCC on Windows is pretty buggy and doesn't include stdlib.

[TIfanx1999]

Many of the European users that happen to speak English as well went to CodeWalrus. Basically, it was formed because a group of users didn't like how Omnimaga was being run. That's why we aren't affiliated. We pretty much knew it would divide activity, but there wasn't really anything that could be done about it. In regards to Ti-planet; from what I remember, there were disagreements between the sites on how to handle the affiliation, so that relationship ended. I think Ti-planet still is pretty active with nspire stuff, but there aren't many nspire devs or users here it seems.

*Edit* I was also reminded that DJ_Omnimaga stepped down and relinquished ownership in 2011 due to stress and issues he was having outside of Omnimaga. His stress was negatively impacting his behavior here. It was a rough time for him. He was still active here and served in various capacities until CodeWalrus became a thing. That should help clarify things a bit.

[Vogtinator]

TI will keep updating the OS and try to block Ndless. From my observations, it seems like it takes a considerable amount of work to find a loophole to install Ndless, and as the amount of people here gets ever smaller, the chance of finding a loophole will decrease. If Ndless isn't available on new calculators, there will be no new members, and C++ projects (which tend to be the most fun because they get the most out of the CPU) won't be usable, so no one will visit anymore. No GBA emulators, no crafti, etc.

Development of Ndless is entirely separate and not tied to any forum, so don't worry
Most new ndless applications are announced and developed on TI-Planet, whilst games can be found mostly on codewalr.us now.

[TomL_12953]

TI will keep updating the OS and try to block Ndless. From my observations, it seems like it takes a considerable amount of work to find a loophole to install Ndless, and as the amount of people here gets ever smaller, the chance of finding a loophole will decrease. If Ndless isn't available on new calculators, there will be no new members, and C++ projects (which tend to be the most fun because they get the most out of the CPU) won't be usable, so no one will visit anymore. No GBA emulators, no crafti, etc.

In addition, nobody will create projects if nobody will use them. It seems like no one is downloading projects, which doesn't encourage programmers at all.

So can we officially wave goodbye to TI-Nspire programming? There doesn't really seem to be a good solution to revitalize this forum. It seems like TI-Nspire programming is a thing of the past now when smartphones are plentiful. It seems like the whole site, along with all the other calculator programming sites, will die pretty soon when people ditch calculator gaming in favor of smartphones.

The above was posted four years ago and still remains relevant today. ndless seems stalled. Has TI finally devised a way to keep them from cracking the OS? If so, then no one who buys a new Nspire or Nspire II will be able to run ndless. Interest will be limited to current users and that group will shrink as members go on to other things, die, or for whatever reason just don't care anymore. Naturally this is a downward spiral. Fewer users interested means that fewer developers will be willing to invest resources to come out with new software. Less new software means fewer users will be interested and so the cycle continues. My 2₵ YMMV.