[free_everybody]

I had no concept of computer programming growing up. It was playing around with my TI-84 around junior year of high school that exposed me to it. I saw the PROGRAM button so I looked in the calculator manual and started writing TI-BASIC. I told my precalc teacher about it and she looked at me funny. She had no idea you could write programs on graphing calculators. I will always appreciate my TI-84.

[khedoros1]

Some of my teachers required you to use the school-owned calculators, which were cleared after every class. Other teachers specifically allowed you to use your own programs during class.

I think that it was pretty common for students to trade programs around, so most of the teachers knew that the calculators were programmable.

[mrguyorama]

My high school precalc textbook actually walked you through the process of writing a simple quadratic formula solver program. By this time, I had actually already gotten into writing TI-BASIC (as the first time I really started learning to program, failing to wrap my head around both python and C before) and I had created a slightly more complicated formula program with input sanitization and error handling, as well as a few other silly formulas. After this chapter I started passing around this program, as well as a small game I had written. These things were probably the most recognized I will ever be for my code, and I still have both programs.

[jcalabro]

Exactly the same story here. I really enjoyed my time tinkering with the TI-84.

[ttoinou]

Yeah ! School was so boring, programming calc is what got me into computer science. I'll never forget all my programs for IFS fractals, Syracuse suite visualization, Tic Tac Toe, Minesweeper...