Survey posted 2001-01-18 17:54 by Andy Selle.

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As previously mentioned there is no such thing as an unbiased choice. However remember that we don't take the staff's decision for absolute truth. The longer you have been down-loading programs the better a sense of individual author's style and quality. This will lead you to agree or disagree to some extent with the staff's decision. What matters is that a featured program tells the first-time, new or casual user that this is a quality program.

So in conclusion we need to make sure that the programs that are featured are quality programs that we as a community are proud of.

If there are other quality programs then they should be listed. Keeping a running list of quality programs (including updating when a better version or such) would allow people who only come occasionally to sort through the hundreds of programs to find some good ones. Later when they are hooked, then they can download and try every game in their respective sections.

Your right about the bias thing.

TiMemory by the ti chess team is a featured program, but would it have been featured if was made by any other random person?



-Samuel

no, it wouldn't have, because TIchess was the greatest program ever made and the finest simulation of chess I have ever experienced. TImemory follows this utopia of a program and would have been obviously stolen from TIchess.

also, featured program should be more like "good, decent game." As meaning "excellent game," it sounds like it is amazing and there is no game like it. choosing the really great games should be done in some thrice a year contest or something.

But is timemory so great that it desrves the featured program label?


-Samuel

As I said before, featured program should have a more general meaning, so it doesn't upset people who feel there programs are the best, making them feel the featured program system is biased.

TI-memory is an excellent piece of work from the ti-chess team, but it's not hyped-up as an excellent program since it's not in the favorite genre.

I like the big selection of programs. But I'm wondering if it is possible to make a program that you could like network two 89's together. To like control one with the other. I dont know if thats possible to do, but if it is that would be the coolest program.

Although I have to agree that the manual is not up to the mark (or else it was not written for or by (or both) the simple-minded, I have to say that this does not provide you with an escuse to COMPLETELY ignore it. The chat program is desribed on page 353.

I don't think that he was talking about a chat program.

Yes, it all depends on what you want to do.
Obviously, if you want a program to "like control one with the other" you need the great level of control which is only provided by asm. However, if you want to just exchange variables, execute programs (on the other calc) etc. you can do it in basic... AND THE BASIC OUTLINE OF SUCH A PROGRAM IS (guess what?) THE CHAT PROGRAM!!!
I have written programs of this kind myself.

maybe RemoteCalc for 83+ would convert, ill try it

there was no.. "ticalc.org's opinion sucks cause they are biased" thats unfortunate

And it is not ticalc's opinion as much as a random staff member's.


-Sam

Hey i actually suggested this poll topic,and they put it exactly how i submitted it. I thought they were gonna change it around, for i would have made it how i watned it :P

You can submit poll topics? How do you do that?

I just submitted it to the feedback@ticalc.org email address, and evidently they considered it and used it.

what poll topic did u submit?

I believe that the real issue here is the QUALITY of the programs. While ticalc is a great portal and I do not suggest that the featured programs are (generally speaking) of an inferior quality, I do say that if every submitted program were at least tested for functionality (mind you I am not saying efficiency)it would solve a variety of problems.
To begin with we would be spared of the junk that does not even run. I believe everyone knows the frustration of running a promising program and having it violently crash your calculator. The other day I myself had an 89 asm program "blue-screen" (official slang of the Vector - applies to anything that is even remotely digital) my calculator to the point of resetting the memory.
Secondly, as many of us well know, people are trying to get featured for years, but to no avail. Getting rid of the programs that were clearly not intended to run by their authors would both allow those who were previously frustrated to share their programs and would provide us with a greater variety of programs of better quality.
Lastly, the quality of the programs will indubitably benefit the great and <cough> digital calculator community!
A closing note: I have only briefly mentioned the efficiency of the featured programs in the above discussion, but I have changed my mind now and would like to expound briefly on this exciting topic. First of all, let's make a distinction between an asm a basic program. Asm programs are (generally) written by more skillful programmers simply because very few people can program in asm and op codes as compared to the basic crowd. That in addition to the fact that asm runs many times faster than basic makes efficiency less of a concern in case of the asm programs.
The exact opposite is true of the basic programs: they are (generally) quite badly written (sometimes with the gotos! (not that I have anything against the venerable and romantic goto command, but, you have to agree with me, loops are a MUCH better choice for ti-basic)). Plus, let us not forget such opuses as the factor( and isPrime( functions for the 89, which are actually built-in and the ridiculous numerical integration "packet" (I am not making this up) for the 86 which was "guaranteed to be the world's best choice for the AP" because of "the simplicity and ancient purity of the interface". I do admit the interface joke was very appealing - what can be simpler than to pull a battery out?

The Self-Appointed Spokesman
for the
Calculator Community (CC)

here here
<applause>

i think the above mentioned and the need for dividing the files into better categories and genres is imperative. It would be so much easier if a program had only a "+" sign to signify that a program works. Then, some kind of competition could be held announcing the best of each categories and a top 5 or 10 for each calc.

stew-shaft!

I was agreeing with you up until the part about Basic vs. Asm. Basic programs often are of poor quality, and games are not usually fast enough, but Asm programs can be buggy and Asm programs aren't necessarily better (I've seen many bad ones).

I am afraid i have not made myself clear enough.
When I said that asm progs are better than basic ones I meant they were superior in terms of the actual code.
Put another way: if you take an asm and a basic program both of which run and are free of major bugs, then the asm program is more efficient and demonstrates a better programming style/technique while the basic program is one inefficient convoluted goto mess which was written by the method of SUCCESSIVE RANDOM IMPROVEMENTS and does not even delete the variables that it creates, does not reset graph screens, etc.
Why is that? Simply because it takes more guts to write an asm program, while any <...> who have seen his friend code a program for his TrueBasic class is confident enough to write (and post, damn him) a program "that adds or substracts two numbers".

If they could cut out all that f***ing crap, they could probably have some decent bug-free games. These a**h***s who write these stupid programs that are d***ed for only doing something you could do better w/o a calculator are the ones f***ing this website up. You can't find any programs from the genuises of the ti-chess team because there's too much shit of idiot basic do-nothings.

CUT THE CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stew-shaft!

That's just all my freakin' 2c