Survey posted 2004-08-02 00:49 by Jon.

Contribute ideas to surveys by sending a mail to survey@ticalc.org.

Survey idea by Morgan : )

If you choose other, please list the section of the newsletter you like most. It'll help give me a better idea of what the community wants to see! Also, this survey is an experiment to see how many people look forward to the "Miscellany" section the most, for whatever reason :P

And yes, I forgot one choice: "I don't read the newsletter." Sorry!

Morgans back? =P
I'd like to see some breaking Ticalc related news in the newseltter, ie: a new "Guess the number!" Basic Program. (perhaps a competition should be held for the vast number of programs that do the same and the winner gets to have the sole basic program of that type on the entire archive?)

Now THAT is a good idea :)

Then you'd have to include "Rock, Paper, Scissors" because that basically is guess the number.

Well, I voted "Other" because personally my favorite part of the newsletter is where they drone on and on about how great, wonderful, and marvelous I am at programming. Oh shoot! That was only a dream! Oops...well, I can't change my vote now...

It's a great idea!!! Maybe we could finally get rid of all the crappy quadratic solvers... ;-)

Monopolies are never a good idea, no matter what they are over. For example, a monopoly on a very simple commodity, water, most often results in dirty, dangerous water because there is no accountability. Even though the monopolist wins a competitive bid, quality quickly degrades. How does this apply here? Future updates will include bugs or won't be compatible with future calculator models or OS versions. Please also consider the fact that a very simple program in objectives is very understandable and is often used to demonstrate complex concepts, and that there is no BASIC Source section.

With guess the number games, who cares if they are crappy?

A common bug is that when the person guesses the right number, it doesn't say that the right number has been guessed. If it's bad (because it's so simple) most often it doesn't work.

Another example: Someone wanted to show how to do file I/O and didn't want to confuse the reader of the source with a complex program. So they made a guess the number program with a Save Game feature. Should that be rejected, even though it's useful to programmers?

P.S.: Why didn't they write a tutorial? Because sometimes the tokenizer throws weird errors and an executable gets past that. I remember a library that did that but I can't recall its name.

Solution: copy the "Guess The Number" program from the manual. ;-)
*I definately know it's in the 83+ manual*

I was saying that it could be used to illustrate complex concepts because the code is short and simple.

So, setting the range to one thousand? :-P
Basic programs should not be made if the calculator itself can find the solution with a few tokens or if the program has no purpose other than cheap entertainment. Ie: RPG >=P

The purpose is not cheap entertainment. The purpose is demonstrating a complex concept using simple code so that you don't overwhelm people.

This is the third time I've said this.

He's talking about the save game feature not the guess the number game. In case you didn't know

There's a Save Game example in the manual?
Combining progress.expr, settings.list, screen.pic, points.expr, etc., into game.GRP?
I don't think the manual has a FLib example.
With non-AMS calculators it would be more complicated.

83+ :-) my fav. Highly configurable for one who doesn't limit themself to others.

Yay, great! ;-P
Just another thing, why submit hundreds of programs that do the same thing with different routines that achieve the same answer? *other than efficiency*
Perhaps programmers opensource bits can be gathered for a section on ticalc.org to let others know what routines "are" being used and are known. Instead of hiding behind some boring program.
(not implying that programs submitted aren't already opensource)

OK...
Why would you make a complicated program to show a newbie an advanced concept? It would confuse them.

I always assumed that ticalc newbies would be interested in timesaving+byte-saving routines...

They are. However, if they're newbies, they might not understand a lot of complex code, so I don't see what the point is of making a complex program to show a newbie without any interest in whether the person understands the code.

I'd hardly call Basic or ASM complex, just a lot of simple routines put together. Those routines could take a user a while to figure out by a series of trial and error.

My point is that a simple program is easier to understand than a long one. If you make a complex task (like file I/O) into a simple program, you are less likely to confuse a newbie reader.

Confused O_o j/k

There isn't a BASIC source section (and there should be), but they could put it in the informational texts section.

You can't tokenize an informational text, and as I said above, the calculator trusts executables and not untokenized text, so at least it will run.

You can't tokenize a text file, but you can include a program file in the zip archive along with a text file explaining the code. I think it might really help reduce the amount of junk in the archives.

If someone was looking for an executable and they were new enough to want to learn from BASIC source, why would they look in Informational Text?

That's why they should include a BASIC source/example code section. :-)

You may want to execute the text, and then go back to see what happened where! >_<

Another example:ticalc.org. They can basically do whatever they want, and if we don't like it, we can either set up another site that ends up getting 6 hits per month before shutting down or we can shut up and keep coming back here. People will mention other sites, but in reality ticalc.org has a huge portion of the market share. Overall, they haven't started abusing their power (a test of that being whether I am allowed to post this), but they could if they wanted to.

Yes, and slimey's back too. But I might not get to return here very often in the near future. :(

*has to run Aethernet <g> cable to room. 110 feet, +/-
10 ft.*

110 +/- 10 feet...
110+10=120
110/10=11
110-10=100
So, which is it? ;) j/k

very funny. somewhere between 90 feet and 130 feet. My measurements weren't very precise.

110 + or - 10
110+10=120
110-10=100
110 or 10=110 (that's boolean algebra for ya)

Nice :-D Good thing the digits were zeros and ones.

But what if it was EXCLUSIVE OR?
110 XOR 10 = 100, which is still one of your options. :)

Or you could do 110 NAND 10, to get 101. w00t!

NAND! That's not one you see very often! :)

AND  - 1 0 0 0
OR   - 1 1 1 0
XOR  - 0 1 1 0
NAND - 0 1 1 1
NOR  - 0 0 0 1
XNOR - 1 0 0 1

Heh, is that right? XNOR? It has to have some kind of name... I just made up "XNOR"

You are correct. There are indeed "NOR" and "XNOR" operations.

LOL! And I never thought that report I had to do on George Boole last year would come in handy...

Boolean logic usually comes in handy in ASM... but not a lot of other things :(

What do you mean "you don't see NAND very often"? :-) It's one of the more frequently used gates in digital logic!!! (I think you can make almost any function out of a couple NAND gates or something like that).

A NAND A = NOT A
NOT (A NAND B) = A AND B
(NOT A) NAND (NOT B) = A OR B

There are more, but I forgot them...

Oh, wow, that's cool... but what I meant was, you don't usually have a NAND operator in most programming languages. As far as I know, they don't have one in z80 asm... just AND, OR, and XOR.

It has been demonstrated that NAND (or NOR) gates can be used exclusively to produce any combinitorial logical expression. That comes in useful because programmable logic chips can be manufactured that contain only NAND circuits -- then, when the time comes to program it, the expressions containing other logic (such as OR, XOR, NOT, etc...) can be translated in-line to combinations of NAND gates.

Example: X = A XOR B
A B X
0 0 0
1 0 1
0 1 1
1 1 0

X = (A NAND (B NAND B)) NAND (B NAND (A NAND A))
A B X
0 0 0
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 0

That wouldn't be very good, for one reason I can think of right now. Suppose there is a snake game out there that is REALLY COOL. It would win the contest and the snake game that was made NOT to entertain, but to educate would be taken off of the server. Not good for people trying to learn ASM.

Uhh...he said BASIC progs.

It applies across-the-board to any advanced programming topic.

Instead of making the program deemed "best" in its category the *only* program of its type available, you could list it first and have it stand out somehow, like featuring it.

I voted 'other'...
Why did I do that?
Because I'm glad the newsletter is back, it's all good...

but what would be good is a current projects section, AKA a 'up and coming' section. That would be something to look forward too.