I've received an e-mail from an author of some of the programs I deemed as 'bad'. Let me rephrase my previous post.

The programs themselves are not bad. Some are overly obvious, yes (like the 'cot-sec-csc' function which most people with any programming experience put on their calc when they got it). But when you get down to it, the main reason I was annoyed is that, rather than submit *all* the programs *together*, these people have submitted them individually, thus cluttering up the front page and the archives unnecessarily. Now before you say "But you can set it to not display them in the preferences!" I'd like to say that that isn't the point. I see no reason to submit 20 separate math functions - each about 5-10 lines each - as individual programs. When I submitted my original C library, it was split into about 18 files, but it was in *ONE* ZIP file. Basically, what these people have done is the equivalent of me submitting each function separately.

As I said before, the only reason they seem to be doing this is to boost their download ranks. To whoever the person is that e-mailed me: I'm not afraid that someone is going to pass me. Truth be told, I could care less how many times my programs are downloaded. I just think it's good to have them out there. But when someone submits separately a bunch of related programs that, in my opinion, should be in one big file, it gets on my nerves.

I hope this clears things up for everyone.

--Michael McElroy

people submit such things seperately to cheat on thier busiest authors ranking. This has been the standard for mario levels for at least 3 years now.

Ticalc should not accept greyscale pictures. The picture makers are for people's own personal use, not so that you can make lame files and clutter up ticalc.

I like ticalc and think that it is a good idea to have a one place download site where I can go for my programming needes but the crap on this site is tremendous. I am not going to bother to upload to ticalc.org until they find a better way to handle there queue.

Currently I have about 3 duplicates and 1 of my programs lost it 'featured' status because of ticalc's system. Of course 'Featured' status now only means that a program was written by a bigwig, not that it is exceptional.

-Samuel

> Of course 'Featured' status now only means that a program was written by a bigwig, not that it is exceptional.

It would be quite interesting to know exactly what this statement means, and even more interesting to know the reasons for it.

There really isn't a reason for it, sorry.

As for what it means isn't it obvious? The memory game by mr Nussbaumer is of high quality and is a good program. But would it be featured if written by someone else?

What's your thought?

-Samuel

The general idea does seem obvious. But it's kind of hard to tell exactly what you mean, since you didn't state what period of time you think this happened over, exactly who the 'bigwigs' are, or whether you actually think that being featured implies with certainty in 100% of cases that the program is by a 'bigwig' or were just exaggerating because you thought that a program by a 'bigwig' is more likely to be featured. Nor is it clear whether you think that some/many/most of the programs featured for this reason actually are bad programs, or that they really are good but other equally good programs are just overlooked.

All of these things could be the subject of lengthy flame wars, so I thought I should ask first.

My own opinion is that this is not the case. Though there haven't been any featured programs lately, I looked through the ones for this year (not back as far as Memory) and while some of the programs were by 'well-known' people, in many cases the featured program was the first 'high-profile' product by that person. Even among only the games there are The Incredible Adventure, Alien Invasion, Tyron RPG, WallPipe, Patience, and Command to Conquer.

>All of these things could be the subject of lengthy flame wars, so I thought I should ask first

True and I was worried about this. Thank you.


>Nor is it clear whether you think that some/many/most of the programs featured for this reason actually are bad programs, or that they really are good but other equally good programs are just overlooked.

This is it exactly. The featured programs are all very good but they leave out to many others that are just as good or better.

Ticalc did get rid of potm for a reason.

Anyways The first coment I was just rambling about how ticalc is sort of sliding down hill and I hope that they are doing things to pick themselves back up.


-Samuel

I would certainly agree that many good programs are not featured. However I can only guess (I suppose I could also try to ask) how ticalc.org decides. The idea that it depends on who you are was a little disturbing to me though, especially since I (as the author of a program featured in the last year) might have been including in the group of those unfairly receiving special privileges. Of course I have been bashed in similar ways much more directly and viciously in the past, but your post was especially worrisome since you are a respected programmer.

It seems that the featured programs may also be coming to an end since there haven't been any for a while. No doubt there was a reason for getting rid of the POTM, but what that reason is was itself disputed in a many flames.

My theory on this is that the "bigwigs" have been around long enough to know to publicize their work a bit (or other people will be interested enough to do it for them). A lot of the newer programmers I think have this attitude of "well, I'll submit my stuff and hope someone notices it"... and often no one does, even if the program is very good.

Though the original comment referred only to featured programs, otherwise I suppose that really is the issue in question.

However, my opinion remains that a lot of publicity has been given to programs by newcomers. I don't really think there is a problem of truly good programs which were actually released being overlooked by ticalc.org (except for some TI-89/92+ programs which may be ignored here but are publicized on TI-FR).

Of course, if nobody at all noticed a particular program, that would of course include me so I wouldn't no about that case. And that would also mean you never noticed the programs either so of course you couldn't give examples. But if you were exagerrating and just meant that few people noticed it, it would be interesting to know what programs or kinds of programs you thought have been overlooked.

Yeah, I was thinking more of what gets mentioned in the news... but typically anything on the front page is also a featured program.

Anyway, I guess the most recent example I can think of is a Frogger game for the 86 that I thought was pretty good. Although maybe it's more that some things got featured/newsed that weren't that great... I was surprised Balloon 86 got an item, seeing as it was a port, and of course YAS 2.0 wasn't all that big a deal...

In retrospect it probably has more to do with circumstances at the time, i.e. which staff member was awake that day :) or if it was a slow news week...

Wow, real examples. I actually was aware that a grayscale frogger was released for the TI-86 during 2001 before, but I hadn't actually tried to play it until right now (leaving me with 1347 bytes of free memory on the calculator, no less). In the case of YAS, they haven't put 2.0 in the archives either, so this probably is just slowness.

Slowness on my part actually :)

You're absolutely right, in that it does indeed depend on who's awake and how busy a week it is. :)

I've realized something very important:

If you want your programs featured in the news, you have to e-mail the news people about it!!

I've been ranked quite high on the top downloads list numerous times (I was 3rd place for a couple weeks), and there have been no news items about me. Of course, I never sent any e-mail to the people who would have *written* the news.

I'm not complaining. Just pointing something out.

--Michael McElroy

Does anyone know if there is a way to convert TI Calc programs to Palm Pilot programs? I would love to see a port of a grayscale Phoenix, on my Palm.
The Palm Pilot Man

Werewolf.com-Get in, or get out

It might be possible, since they (the TI-89 and most Palm-powered devices) run on two very similar processors. It would be a matter of figuring out machine code calls, of course, which in this case might be almost identical.

sure, start working on it, but you might need an emulator though

I was wondering if anyone thought that Visual Basic is good. Is it actually a form of BASIC?

If Y2K is 2000 than I'm a monkey's uncle,
Null

"Microsoft gives you Windows... OS/2 gives you the whole house "

No, it's not good.

If you are going to do any serious programming, learn C & C++.

I'd have to disagree. You can't simply say that VB isn't good. VB has its strong points. If you want to write a powerful application in very little time, use VB. The code is written almost in plain English. Sure, it doesn't compile into very *small* programs like C or C++, but it is a good language to write in if you're just learning object-oriented programming.

I agree that C and C++ are more powerful, however. They let you go beyond the OS's functionality and execute actual bits of machine code. They are much more flexible and compile into more efficient, faster programs.

In this case, I think it's a matter of choice. Are you trying to write a powerful program that handles all sorts of operating system tasks? Use C or C++. Are you trying to write a databasing program, a web browser, a text editor, or a program using hundreds of graphical objects like buttons, labels, and text areas? Use VB.

>>>You can't simply say that VB isn't good.<<<

Ok:

Compared to C / C++, Visual Basic is not good.

...
In some ways, yes. In some ways, it has advantages.
Like I said, if you want to write a Windows-style program *quickly*, you should use VB. It requires much less code to be functional than most C/C++ programs would.

Ok, ok. VB has it's advantages for Windows users. None for me.

hehehe... Long live Linux!

Yes. It's great :)

Depends on what you consider good. There are many factors to consider. The first one that I think of is your target OS - VB only runs in Windows, but based on your comment at the end of your post, do you want to develop for Windows? If you want to get the most OS's at once, Java is the way.

Also, speed. I am not sure but I think VB is a bit lacking here, especially compared to non OO languages, like C. And I think VB is slower than C++ also.

Size, it has already been covered. VB programs tend to be unnecessarily huge.

Yes, VB is loosly based on BASIC. It started out almost exactly like BASIC, but as each version went on, MS added features. Then they made it Object-Oriented (at around version 6), making it seem nothing like BASIC except syntax-wise now. OOP is very different from procedural and much harder to learn. C is procedural and C++ is OO. C and C++ have similar syntax also, and the syntax for Java (OO) is based on C. (Syntax pretty much is just the spelling/symbols of the different commands)

I would not personnaly reccomend VB at all, but if you know BASIC (QBASIC is very similar), don't mind large/slow programs or your programs are so small it won't matter and you are programming for Windows(I personally prefer Java for just about anything), or you just want to develop applications relatively quickly, than VB is a perfectly legitimate choice.

Java's a lot of fun. I just learned Java last semester up at Michigan Tech, and me and a friend of mine wrote up a little instant messaging program in it. Sure, it's bulky, and it requires the Java runtimes to execute, but hey, we did it!

I'm a geek.

There is a difference between Nerds, and geeks. Geeks are just weird, programmers are Nerds.

I'm a Nerd

I'm a person...

Actually, up at Michigan Tech we've made an official definition of Nerd and Geek. Geeks are those who do any specific thing obsessively - e.g., computer programming, playing in a band, singing, etc. That's why you have band geeks, computer geeks, and so on. Nerds are geeks without social lives.

Hehe, I guess that would classify me as a geek then. My girlfreind's brother was right...

Oy. That would make me a Nerd for sure.

Well band people call themselves band nerds (or bandies), not band geeks.

I guess it's a matter of location. They call us "computer geeks" and "band geeks" in Michigan.

I'm proud to be a nerd! http://nerdscontroltheworld.tripod.com

I'm both.