Nice. I hope more people submit thought-provoking articles in the near future.

You can easily do trees in TI-Basic, just use array indices instead of pointers, and make your own "new" and "delete" operators.

"hypothetical replacement language"

hmm. Competeing with the conveinace of TI-BASIC. That could be hard.

YES, but geogeo (a french guy) is going to put GFA-BASIC on-calc, with an on-calc interpreter (? dunno if it is the right word, i'm french too).
Go on the url (and to "Programmation GFA Basic") to find the stuff (everything is in french). It is really fast. For now, he is working on sprites, and he told me that he was at 1500 sprites/second, without optimization…

Yes, geogeo's GFA Basic is by far the most serious project concerning on-calc interpreters. The results are VERY impressive. I really believe this program can start a revolution among BASIC programmers.

wow, i've been waiting for a newer basic, but will people familiar with TI-BASIC be able to jump into this or will it be completely different?

well there is one being ported called MCL check out the url link

MLC?

MCL is a Morvlon component.

:)

Hey, I was just looking through that source the other day to figure out how to detect only certain programs and put them in some sort of list, or make some sort of scrollable function, however I can tell it is going to take longer than looking at it for 10 minutes to figure it out.

I will get it burntfuse (-:

Not just being ported - we've got working versions for the Casio AFX and TI-86. I'm finishing up the final version for the 86, then there will be some porting involved for the 82/83/+/SE/89/92/+ versions.

Also, it's MLC, not MCL. Multi-platform Language for Calculators. ;-)

Any thoughts on making the on calc language C? or a variation of it? It would allow programmers much more freedom with programming.

How about TI-BAC?

It has all of the simple TI-BASIC commands and it follows the same syntax, but it has more commands.

Also, it would be compiled into ASM. There would be essentially two files: the on-calc source (.C) and the on-calc executable (.ASM). The .C would be for editing and recompiling and the .ASM would be for editing. This would also solve the problem for people who don't want their BASIC source code to be revealed: use the TI-BAC editor, and release only the compiled code.

I already have something; find my post somewhere below (I think its "I have something"); also you can see it by clicking my link above ("(web page)" just under my user name)

And what about TIGCC (see "Web Page" link above)? If you think TI-BASIC and assembly both suck, then you should be using C.

*Gasp* How could assembly suck??? It's faster and more efficient than anything out there!

Except COBOL that is...

Last time I check COBOL was not faster or more efficient than assembly.

>Last time I check COBOL was not faster or more efficient than assembly.

I'd even say COBOL is slow (for a compiled language), ugly, always shooting 'ILLEGAL CHARACTER IN NUMERIC FIELD' and desease prone.

How ever, I read one day :
COBOL is a very bad business programming language - but all the others are so much worse. -- Robert Glass, CACM Vol 40 No. 9 (Ask me if you want the URL)

Wheter it is true or not, I can't say.

COBOL rocks!!!!!
Québec too :)

btw, what is COBOL?

>COBOL rocks!!!!!
ahahahahahaahahahahaha :D

>Québec too :)
I agree. Even if we are overtaxed, that the climate is cold 10 months out of 12 and that in the near future, our economy will soon become insuficient to sustain the needs of the aging population.

>btw, what is COBOL?
COmmon Business Oriented Language i.e. made by a manager, without a doubt.
Why I hate COBOL ? Here's a Hello world in COBOL :
000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. 'HELLO'.
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-390.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-390.
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100500 DISPLAY "Hello world!" LINE 1 POSITION 1.
100600 STOP RUN.

You are exaggerating!

COBOL is the most versatile, efficient, and widespread language!

Uh, nothing CAN be faster or more efficient than assembly, since everything compiles into assembly eventually (OK, machine code...almost the same thing).

Of course. I fully agree with you.

However, there _are_ some valid complaints about it, notably that if you either don't know what you're doing or simply make a typo, your calculator will just crash, and that it isn't particularly easy to use.

Well, it's a bit harder to master, and a bit more dangerous. That doesn't really mean it sucks, though, unless you're impatient.

Not to write!

While C isn't difficult to understand, some of my same concerns about assembly exist with C as well. I've managed to spectacularly crash my TI-89 a few times because of bugs in programs I've wrote. Part of my article focuses on memory management and it's regarded as one of the areas in which C is lacking. C++ and Java, for example, have tried to improve on C's method of memory management.

Also, to my knowledge, there's not a good C compiler, if any, for some calculators. If you're using a 68k calculator, there's TIGCC. But what if you're looking to develop for the TI-83 Plus SE?

You might try checking out the website in the link.

It is supposed to try and adapt the SDCC compiler to work with the TI-83. I haven't tried it yet, but if it does what it says it does, then it should be able to compile c language in to assembler.

C++ is better because there are many easy shortcuts like "x++", "x--", "x+=1", "x-=1", etc. to do easy math shorter than typing x=x+1 or x=x-1.

besides, C is opsolete. C++ will soon also probably be opsolete because now there's C#

How could one render the other obsolete? They are three completely different languages.

Um... no. C++ was so named because ++ is a C operator. It wouldn't have been funny otherwise. C++ did add some useful extensions such as prototyping which have since been absorbed into C itself.

But there's far more to C++ than that: although it is (almost) an extension of C, it is really a very different language.

C++ has in no way made C obsolete: quite the opposite; it's never taken off in the way C did, and 50 years from now nobody will use C++ anymore, but C will still be around.

C# I refuse to comment on.

And then they extended C again with Objective-C (a very interesting language, to be sure).

And what in tarnation is C#? I've heard of it, but not much.

C#, I think, has web commands and is sort of like Java.

C# is Microsoft's "upgrade" to C++. Like all the other .NET languages, it features Java-like syntax and a relatively simple learning curve. Unfortunately, C# requires the .NET Framework, which is to .NET programs what the JVM is to Java apps. I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that there's no .NET framework for TI calculators :)

Actually, it's an 'upgrade' to VB making it look more Java-like. It has nothing to do with C++.

You have obviously never used C#. The programming syntax of C# is nearly identical to C++ - curly brackets, required parentheses around function arguments, angle brackets for includes, etc. etc.

The "Web Page" link in this post goes to an example of C# code. Here's an example of VB code:
http://www.woodger.ca/vbsamp.htm
The vast difference between the two is IMMEDIATELY noticable.

C# and J# were developed by Microsoft, and are meant to provide Java-like syntax for the .NET framework. J# used to be called J++ until Sun sued Microsoft for using their name. Why Microsoft needs to versions of nearly the same language (or why they even bothered to make C# altogether) I have no idea.

Can someone please explain to me the "philosophy" behind the .NET framework. Why do you need portable code among PCs? Normal executables work on most PCs (excluding the old crappy ones running Win95, or even worse 3.1), and they are much faster than Microsoft's "Portable [among Microsoft operating systems] Executable"

I also meant "two" instead of "to"

Because you can run the same executable built in MSIL on a Pocket PC for example. And perhaps in a few years we will be able to run it perfectly on other OS

than the ones of the Windows family.
'Managed code' is also necessary to provide an execution environment where (among other things) you do not need to worry about memory management, like with Java.

>and they are much faster than Microsoft's "Portable [among Microsoft operating systems] Executable"

MSIL has been designed as a Just In Time language (JIT), i.e. translated to machine code before execution. So MSIL is actually as fast as x86.

JIT means one of 2 things:
* the entire program is compiled right before executing it. This means it takes ages to load.
* portions of the program are compiled just before they are executed. This means these portions take ages to load, and the program is very slow.
JIT is not a good substitute for AOT (ahead-of-time) compilation. The people claiming otherwise are Java or .NET proponents who want to force their slow non-native code down our throats.

amen.

No, it's not the syntax that matters. If it were so, we could also say that javascript is very similar to C... C# is in essence VB with a revised syntax and some additional constructs.

You seem to be missing the point.
C# is an upgrade of C++. VB.NET is an upgrade to VB that makes it more similar to C++.

C# is definately not an upgrade of C++. C# is Microsofts imitation of Java (they can't call it Java, because Sun sued them awhile ago)

However, C++.NET is an upgrade to C++ ;)

Sorry, no. Microsoft's imitation of Java is Visual J#, which IS Java, but uses the .NET Framework instead of the Java runtime, and compiles to a .EXE file.

Of course, a real C expert would realize the irony in the name. Shouldnt it be "++C"?

Not really, because the value of C++ wasn't seen until after C was improved ;D

Inadvertently ironic. I like.

With a decent compiler there shouldn't be a difference.

... WHAT? No difference??
'++c' increments the value of c by 1 before reporting the value. 'c++' increments AFTER reporting the value.
Example:
c = 3;
return c++; // returns 3

versus

c = 3;
return ++c; // returns 4

It's better because it has some shortcuts? Come on, you can't be serious. While I agree that ease of use (and therefore, shortcuts) are a part of "how good" a language is, I refuse to think the entire C++ language is better than C, if you don't have more reasons than a couple dozen shortcuts.

Well Matt, You seem to have struck a sour cord with a few people. No hard feelings, just strong criticism. Also, I believe the word is spelled obsolete.

Last time I remember, the "x++", "x--", "x+=", etc. shortcuts worked in C, or at least in TIGCC. Unless something's wrong with my memory.

Indeed, they are in C. They are in pretty much any C-like language, including PHP, Java and C#.
Thankfully, they've also been added to VB in VB7. However, the increased "neatness" of the VB7 language has made it incredibly verbose, which is (I guess) another reason to switch to C#. I hear very good things about it.

C++ executables are huge, too.

Why does everybody have this misconception that C++ induces this gigantic code bloat? C++ induces minimal code bloat when used properly. Any C++ program that is drastically larger than its C counterpart is poorly written. Many novice programmers are quick to use heavy-duty classes in the C++ Standard Library for simple operations (such as using an istringstream to convert a double to an int which is retarded)

While C is stupid (lack of gargbage collector, printf'ing is annoying, you know variables at the end of the statement with odd little markers in the middle to denote where they go) it's obviously not obselete since it's being used for something that C++ either can't or just isn't being used to do (TIGCC).

As for C#.... I realized how stupid it was before I even keyed in my first lines of BASIC.

Although I would really like to have something more powerful than BASIC on the calculator. It would make it so I used my class time programming instead of thinking about programming.

And a random rant involving Java:
While still pretty flexible if you plan on doing any GUI that don't use very clear TextFields, Buttons, etc this is an extremely useless language (except that is really hammers in OOP what with it being entirely OOP based). Also the fact that the ENTIRE language is blackboxed so if you want to have some real fun and do something like not bother with the 15 layers you have to go through just to handle a key press you have to find a different workhorse language... ex: C++

what about my lagnauge? it's like C++/java/(all those with that syntax) build on assembly. Click on my weblink for a quick description, or you can always email me if you are interested in helping define extra stuff for it :-)

http://groups.yahoo.com/ groups/Antidisassemblage
(ignore the space in the link)

Why is everything Members Only? You should allow us to at least view things without getting a Yahoo account and joining your group.

the GPL is not the "GNU Public License", it is the "GNU General Public License"... See Link...

printf is annoying? Printf is the most amazing print function ever. Why do you think Sun just added printf to java? The ability to easily format, space, and arrange text is great. The java garbage collector only slows down the program to keep programmers from making dumb mistakes, while in C as long as you have even half an idea of what malloc and free do, you should never need to garbage collector, benefit from its absence, and know what the processor is really doing, unlike super high-level langauges like Java where you could learn the language and have no idea what anything actually does.

Printf is completely counterintuitive (I might've spelled that wrong)! And the reason of TI-BASIC is to give begginner programmers something to use so they can make some applications also. So have a begginning programming having to do alot of garbage collection (seeing as to how in C they would be attempting alot more). And I do hate Java also.... it's like Windows XP, it tries to be idiot proof..... Blackboxing everything is such an annoying feature, along with not being able to overload operators (it just adds style to programs, but still). This is really inspiring me to go find a decent C++ compiler that works on XP....

>> Printf is completely counterintuitive

Not as much as streams and << or >> operators.

>> This is really inspiring me to go find a decent C++ compiler that works on XP....

Microsoft's C++ compiler from VS.NET is free and works very nicely on XP.

>> And I do hate Java also.... it's like Windows XP, it tries to be idiot proof.....

There's nothing wrong with idiot-proofing something, providing you have the same level of functionality. The garbage collection in Java makes things easier and safer. I would like support for proper pointers in Java, for example - the only problem I have with Java at the moment is that it's not brilliantly fast. It's still an OK language.

benryves>>Microsoft's C++ compiler from VS.NET is free and works very nicely on XP.

... for .net ... are you saying that C++ with 'managed extensions' is a decent language. When I'm stuck with the .net framework, I use C# wich is much more cleaner.

I don't think that there is any performance gain to use any .Net language instead of another. Any of these products output the same intermediary code (similar to the java's bytecode) that require a huge runtime envirnment to execute (as java). I have a project where my C# class library is used by a VB user interface the same way that a VB.net (or Delphi.net or COBOL.net, ...) class library.

C# is not an involution of VB or the other way around (even if C# is the new MS' flagship). As java, C# is inspired from C++ (the syntax is similar), that's all.

benryves>> There's nothing wrong with idiot-proofing something, providing you have the same level of functionality.
I agree. In fact, it is a good programming practice. Moreover, for commercial software, it should be mandatory. However, for system programming, a HLL that induce a small overhead (as a good C compiler) is better than a saffer language.

Idiot proofing can be could... *can* however since in order to idiot proof something you have to take away some flexibility, like for example black boxing the entire language or in the case of WinXP making it impossible to do anything without going through a wizard or switching back to 98....

> This is really inspiring me to go find a decent C++ compiler that works on XP....

http://www.mingw.org

Garbage collection is very advantageous in many ways, and in most cases reduces program size and can increase speed (it can also cause pauses in program execution which sucks, but in most cases there is not enough work for the gc to do to make a noticable pause). See the link for details.

>> benefit from its absence, and know what the processor is really doing

malloc() and free() do not tell the programmer anything more about the processor then a Garbage Collector. An Operating System can handle memory anyway it wants, and using malloc or free will not tell you anymore about than the "new" operator. Allocating memory is a bit more complicated than just grabbing a chunk of spare bytes.

Oh, and speaking of the link, D is actually a pretty cool language. It combines the best of C++ and Java, and normally runs faster than C++

Hmm... I didn't mean to double post. Is there any reason why we can't edit our posts? It looks ridiculous having three responses to my original post all written by me

Speaking of the D Language, D is cool because it combines the best of both C++ and Java, and normally achieves performance better than that of C++. It also has a writef that is better than printf because it is typesafe, does not need a format string, no buffer overflows, deals with user-defined types, does not require the user to know the underlying type of a typedef, and can intermix unicode and ASCII characters on the same stream

D looks awesome, it definitely fixes the faults of C++ and java. can it be used to make an os, i wonder.
someone should make a compiler for it for 68k,it'd be great to program calc in oop.

Imagine a built in, on-calc, highly optimized TIGCC made by TI itself.

Keep dreaming. Not only because of the "made by TI itself" part, but also because there is no way to run a compiler like TIGCC on the calculator. You have to make some tradeoffs: optimizing the compiler for running on a calculator also means sacrificing optimization of the generated programs. GCC can't run on the calculator. (At least any current version. Maybe you can get some ancient version like 1.35 to run, but these really suck when compared to current versions, and besides not even that is sure.) That's why it's better to compile on a powerful computer and get calculator programs which are as optimized as possible as a result.

How about a calculator with it built into the ROM... or maybe the system?

But sacrifices are OK with me...

It would take up just as much space as a separate program, and the additional hassles of working it into an already working system without breaking somenting would be ... astronomical. Ain't gonna happen. Furthermore, the ROM is the same as the system. And sacrifices, no, probably AREN'T ok with you, would you like your favorite C game to take up almost four times the space, just because the programmer wanted to write all the code on the calculator. No, what is needed is an on-calc IDE that allows you to then offload your files onto your computer and compile away with TIGCC. Edit on-calc for convenience, compile on-computer for optimization and efficiency.