> I also find it interesting how relatively little attention is given to the advantage of tactile buttons

If I remember correctly, while in programming mode, almost all TI-BASIC keywords could be input by pressing a menu button followed by a number. You could be very efficient once you learned the combinations. By the time I started high school, I had learned the menus well enough that I was writing games in class while concealing the calculator under the desk. (Of course, as I found out later, my teachers weren't fooled for a second.)