Survey posted 2009-12-17 02:36 by Astrid.

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I think all of these are great games/programs so it was tough. Overall, I think Metroid 68k had the most complicated graphics so that's what I voted for

Voted for Metroid. For some reasons I have a feeling that TI-Freakware will win a 3rd straight POTY in a row (altough this time, not by default). That said, all entries were once again amazing, though. Congrats everyone for your feature and good job on your programs.

Voted for jet blaster, though I do not have the type of calculator.

Since the question was: Re: Favorite TI-89/TI-92/TI-92+/v200 Program for 2009? What does that say about the nspire cas calculator?

If a TI-Nspire program was featured, it would have its own POTY category.

Poty? What does that mean? I think that because TI comes out with this new calculator and no one seems to be paying attention to it speaks volumes. Like where is the survey question that asks what is your favorite new nspire or nspire cas program? I'm getting the impression that the nspire/nspire cas calculators are a dud. Where is the excitment about the new TI offering. Comments?

POTY means...Program Of The Year.

There's no excitement about the Nspire series because they're terrible calculators, and TI really goofed up on it. They're trying to completely suppress the ability to create useful non-math programs, and in so doing, they're suppressing the ability to create any programs at all.

BASIC support is poor and C/assembly support is non-existent. It takes time to work around TI's ridiculous roadblocks, but once we do, it'll start to become more and more useful, just like the TI-85 way back when. We're clearly going to have to show them yet again that they don't get anything out of their calculator division until they start letting the community in to help.

I agree with you completely and let me add that the nspire problems are not just in programing. For example they deleted 3D graphing rather than update that obsolete capability from what it is on the 89 and v200. The only people that I can find that like nspire are the ones at the nspire google groups but they make it very clear that you are not to post there if you dare expose the big nspire flaws. Every one I know is waiting and watching. Will TI cave in and redesign nspire turning it into a desirable product or tough it out for a couple of years and then quietly cancel that product line. What do you think? Clearly the person running TI calculators is got to be the very best thing that ever happened to Casio.

I can't stop them from shooting themselves in the foot. All I can do is sit back and laugh, which I've been doing ever since the first DMCA notice about the signing keys.

Take a minute and think about what you're doing, TI. Seriously.

I hope an exploit allowing sending assembly files to the TI-Nspire (and run them on it) or sending a third party OS is found eventually, if not alerady. I am really curious how far this machine could be pushed. (well, I did saw screenshots of the TI-Nspire version of TI-Boy, but I heard that the emulator is not running at the original TI-Nspire speed.)

The TI-Nspire emulator by Goplat, that is.

These Program of the Year surveys are run during December and include programs that we featured in news articles over the year. Since we haven't yet featured an Nspire program, there isn't a survey for it this year. If and when an Nspire program is featured, there will be a separate POTY survey for it.

Travis,
You said: "Since we haven't yet featured an Nspire program." Since nspire has been available all year long, is that because:
a.) Nspires have not caught on in the market place so there are few users for such programs, or
b.) programers don't like the nspire programing capability, or
c.) more specificly the absense of input and output statements for nspire programing, or
d.) the programers are a little ticked off at TI, or
e.) all of the above, or
f.) something I havn't considered (If so, what would that be?)

The Nspire programming capabilities are just too limited. In fact, to program a game, even the TI-81 has better options. The TI-Nspire, for example, doesn't even have an Input function. Try to program an entire game with no command prompt.

"The Nspire programming capabilities are just too limited." Agreed. What I have never understood however is why a company would spend development money on a new product that is not as good as the older ones? What a stupid bone headed decision. And I see no evidence that TI going to redesign this product or significantly improve it through upgrades. The iphone has tens of thousands of software programs available while the nspire has virtually none. Obviously Apple did something right while TI did something wrong and the longer TI waits to fix this thing, the harder it will be to convince people to try an improved nspire. Did I miss something here? Is there some benefit to TI to continue this fiasco?

I just realized that I am struggling to understand the incompetence of people that havn't produced anything new in a dozen years. As a result of their years of inactivity, the boys at TI are simply out of touch with todays realities, such as the color screens the customer sees every day on their cell phone, or the tens of thousands of apps available for iphone which like the nspire is very recent design. Nspire/nspire cas are 1990's designs produced for a 2010 world because the old timers at TI lack 21st century competence.

I'm going to have to say that it's mainly because of the limited programmability. It makes it virtually impossible to make anything truly groundbreaking or impressive on the Nspire at the present. Unless TI actually implements more programming features, the first Nspire featured program will probably end up being an ASM one, if a way to run ASM code is found.

ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS!!! WHOO!