My Programming History

About 19 years ago (1993)  I started college at San Diego State at the age of 50.  Electrical Engineering Major.  Calculus one was miserable for me and I actually flunked it, then re-took it the next semester and got an A. The semester after that was Calculus II, when we were required to purchase the TI-92 calculator, which had just come out from Texas Instruments.  Cost was around $185 I think.  I was pissed about buying that because of the cost and I thought my old HP calculator would work just fine.   Turns out that the TI-92 purchase certainly helped my college career in all my classes and has allowed me to sell my programs for all these years. First I found out that it had a word processor in it and so I started to scan my homework, study problems and whatever into my computer and via Graph-Link was able to download that – as notes – into my TI-92.  I could find topics via word search and it helped me somewhat for tests.  Anything like that however is like an open book test where one has to find the problem, read it, then add your variables and try to get the problem correct.  To me a very slow process and in many instances to slow to even finish all the problems in a test.  Then one day – in desperation for a better system – I happened to read and discover,  in the TI manual, the subject of programming the calculator.  I discovered the fabulous programming capabilities of the TI calculators. Wow what a system for me or anyone. I had an edge over anyone in class from then on, and even better for me, was the ability to never forget a problem. To desperately avoid the waste of time system in college,  of cramming – testing – and forgetting – (CTF) which is the main system of college even today.  I can still do all those problems;  Calculus, Physics, Electronics, Lasers, Optics, even Geology problems. Even if you took fabulous complete notes in classes and college you still couldn’t add the variables and complete a problem, after a while, without out again studying. When you are young like most college students, you don’t know you are wasting time, and don’t care for that matter, but when you attend at the age of 50 its a different story, CTF and wasting time is, and was, not acceptable. I got so good at programming the TI calculators, that  I wrote a manual on programming and used to sell that. However after the Titanium came out that ended.  I would have never found programming, to any helpful extent with TI Connect and the TI-89 calculators, Titanium included. The programming system is still in those calculators but extremely impractical.  Wouldn’t have happened.  I still think that the greatest calculator ever from Texas Instruments was, and is, the TI-92 Plus calculator. Better than the Voyage 200, the NSpire Cas or the Titanium.  The Nspire Cas Cx is pathetic, with no practical programming capabilities to my knowledge.  Anyway enjoy my programs, there is nothing like them.