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Comment by erlanger | Hacker News Reader

7th grade, TI-BASIC. That's what got it started for me. The book that came with the TI-83 had a little chapter on the built-in language and I ran with it. No student with any knowledge of algebra and symbolic mathematics should be making these errors (shown in the article) with named arguments though...that's just weird. Who sees "0 = x" in class?

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Thanks for the flashback. I wonder how many HN members got started on their TI-83. I remember even the most remedial users figuring out how to store enough data to cheat in pre-calc. IMO, the language is less relevant, it just takes a project.

The first real applications I ever wrote were TI-Basic apps I wrote for my TI-89 back in Algebra class.

I remember coding them directly with the keyboard on the calculator. I wrote all kinds of things, things to help me solve things, solve equations, geometry solvers, games. It was a blast, and I think that's what got me interested in programming.

Thanks TI! Maybe Middle Schools should work on developing an introductory programming curriculum to introduce kinds to the idea of programming. It's probably more important then most things middle schoolers are learning, especially considering I probably spent so much of my time in math class programming my calculator.

As far as serious work goes, I only got as far as really simple stuff to take care of the quadratic formula, etc. I was all about the text adventure back then (slow, memory-leaking DrugWars-style game, but people liked it!).

I do. But then, I learned my arithmetic in arabic ;-)

(OT: I can also write mirror-text at my natural hand-writing pace, and often get the order of drawing individual glyphs "wrong"; I might, for example, make a dot first then a vertical bar to wite an 'i'. The occassional "russian" backward or upside down letter creeps in when I am tired, etc.)

I actually think that this rule/convention of having the value on the right and location on the left is a little arbitrary and potentially confusing. To someone that's learning to program, you're putting something that comes after (the assignment) before something that comes before (computation of the value to assign) can be counterintuitive.

Once you get used to it you stop thinking about it, but it's important to realize that this concept isn't as intuitive as it may appear.

Oh, and you didn't ever use the store arrow key (STO->) on your TI-83 to store a value? With this operation the variable goes on the right of the expression, not the left.

In algebra class, the order doesn't matter, because you're never doing assignment operations, you're just figuring out equality.

= vs == strikes again.

While true, in algebra x=0 and 0=x are equivalent, the convention that the teachers teach is to have the dependent variable on the left.

I remember in sixth grade when they revealed to us that "3 \cdot a" and "3a" were additional notations for "3 x a" (three times a) and encouraged use of those notations on homework, I happily wrote "a3" as well because multiplication is commutative.

A simple example would be a fifth-grade teacher testing on the pythagorean theorum. I think the problem would always be worded (assuming no diagram)

    a = 3
    b = 4
    c = ?

Granted, this is one person's experience, but I never recall a variable's value being presented as

    3 = a

True, the dependent variable should be on the left. Sometimes it matters less, for example to express that two sides have the same length, a = b and b = a would both be acceptable.

Possibly more important, you would never see:

  a = 3
  a = 4

Begs the question: which is it, 3 or 4? Or does 3 = 4 too? Just a reminder that the operators really are equality, not assignment.

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