I learned how to program for my calculator by just doing a few certain keypresess. I did not know that programs were executable until one day during lunch, when I had put some names of some things,games, and peolple. When I tried to run it, I got an Err:Syntax message. That is howI discovered how the Disp function works. This is also the lesson that taught me to start programming.

Most of us can say we are "self taught". However, this implies that you must have read some book, looked at some tutorial, or studied somebody's code. Hence, the only truthful answer -- if you are a coder -- is a "combination" of methods.

I never use any tutorials or read a book or any persons programs. I just found a new code I wanted to learn from the catalog and figured out how it can be used. And then learned that way for everything else.

How do you know which native function calls are available? What about the required parameters?

You must read something to know what is available.

native functions: the catalog
and for the reguired parameters, I kept on adding commas and 1s until it worked, then changed the numbers until I understood how it worked.

It was innate in me...I could program when I was born....

And I as well...I was read C tutorials from technoplaza.net while I was waiting to be born.

I should do that to my kid.

i basically taught myself (no pun intended), but had some help from friends, peeking in programs from here and a peek in the manual when i didnt get a function

Hmm...no option for "learned by similarity to other languages" (QBasic in my case), so I chose self-taught. As for machine language, for the TI-86 I learned it from an opcode list...I never learned the assembler mnemonics; I do all my coding on-calc (except for C for the TI-92+).

That's exactly how I learned, except I only learned a little of QBasic before we went to a MAC and I learned Metal Basic and then transfered commands to calc.

It's surprising to me on some level that "in class" isn't an option here. After all, the 82 series are primarily educational tools, and TI didn't write the BASIC interpreter so that we could play games...

On second thought, not really surprising, just sad.

Our teacher is attempting to teach the kids how to program some small programs in class, but all the kids learn to do is type in the program right off the board and don't learn anything. He taught them another Quadratic solver. (Ha Ha, I have a quadratic solver that solves if it has imaginary #'s and radicals and also shows work.)

And to think the amount of quadratic solvers that get submitted that don't have any of that.

I learned BASIC from a combination of trial-and-error and the manual. I learned C from technoplaza.net, some books, and a computer teacher. I learned 68K assembly mostly from trial-and-error and a paper that documents Pila assembly for Palm OS (68K-oriented). I learned ARM assembly from a website (I'm hopeful that the next line of TI calcs will have ARM chips). I still don't know z80 assembly enough to write programs :(

Woah-- the ":(" word-wrapped!

No it didn't.

You either have a higher or lower screen resolution than me.. it didn't wrap here either..

Adjust the window size--it wraps.

When I adjust the window it wraps only along with "program :("

Use IE and 800x600 resolution.

That's exactly the same size screen and internet viewer I use and the ":(" is halfway through a line.

Meaning that the ":" is on one line and the "(" is on the next? That's what I meant!

...Don't use IE

There's no wrappage in 1024 x 768.

I've seen that happen to me a couple of times. Emoticon-aware text editors must not have caught on yet. :-)

But for proper English, it is better not to have only the opening "(" on a line, but colons do belong on the same line as the word they follow, so from a grammatical standpoint (without respect to the present actual function of the aforementioned punctuation marks), Internet Explorer word-wraps them correctly.

Your emoticon wrapped for me (iBook 14.1", 1024x768, Safari, screen about 1-2" less than total screen width), when I couldn't get his to.