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Comment by cjonas | Hacker News Reader

By the time you've figured out how to install and run this, you've probably learned more than the class your cheating in had to offer.

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This is what happened to me in middle school. I wrote a bunch of programs to “help” me with algebra II tests and ended up inadvertently learning an insanely marketable skill in the process.

Same but high school. I ended up porting the Drug Warz game onto my TI calculator and playing it while in class instead. Now some ~23 years later I'm a python wizard.

Similar story here. I wrote programs in TI-Basic to help with some exam questions, and wrote summaries in TI NoteFlio. I ended up getting so many few-euro donations for them from everyone who used them. 30 minutes before the exams, exchanging these things over the TI-link connection.

Of course, nowadays all these TI calculators have exam mode, which blocks the internal memory and a bright LED to indicate this mode is enabled. And the older calculators, with practically the same feature-set (TI-83, TI-84) are now forbidden (should clarify still the same TI-8x calculators are allowed - but only if they have exam mode). Nothing is fun anymore these days.

At least, the one techy guy selling them to the other students has.

I vaguely recall some children's book in which the protagonists spent hours and hours poring over their math textbooks and copying all the important things onto hidden cheatsheets, only to realize--to their horror--that they'd actually studied after all.

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