← Back to context

Comment by 59percentmore

2 days ago

Must have been closer to 20 years, 84(+) didn't come out until 2004.

Gonna be pedantic/crotchety about this because I got into advanced math classes but it was my brother who got the 84+ (I had to settle for a 83+). Guess who's the engineer now, and who's the NEET? Your kids pay attention to what (who) you value, folks.

15 comments

59percentmore

Reply
ivangelion  2 days ago

Genuinely not sure. Are you the brother that spited your family with a successful career or the one whose life was was doomed by a graphing calculator.

  • 59percentmore  6 hours ago

    I'm not sure how the favorite (families have them) doing what the family wanted (becoming the one who is successful) is spiting anything.

    And it sure would be funny if the calculator was a one-off instead of just one instance in a pattern of dysfunctional parenting that taught:

    Son 1: The family will always have your back, no matter the outcome as; you'll be rewarded, so long as you try.

    Son 2: No matter what you accomplish, you will be valued less.

    Real laugh-riot there. Hope that clears things up.

bloppe  2 days ago

I don't remember there being much of a difference between the 83 and 84. Did you care about the amount of memory or the clock speed of the processor? Or was it more of a status thing.

serf  2 days ago

My guess : the engineer got the older model

Reason : making due with more scarcity increased independence and critical thinking.

I don't know if that was your point...

fsckboy  2 days ago

had to search that, NEET is India's National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

No, I was too scared to ask.

  • jacobolus  2 days ago

    NEET means "Not in Education, Employment, or Training". The stereotype is an unemployed young adult living with their parents and playing video games all day.

thaumasiotes  2 days ago

> I got into advanced math classes but it was my brother who got the 84+ (I had to settle for a 83+)

I had a TI-85 (maybe 86), unlike the entire rest of my school who had 83s.

There was a difference: when programming in TI-Basic, variable names on a TI-83 are limited to a single character. On the 85, you can make them longer.

But that was pretty much the only difference, and it will never come up if you're using the calculator for school-related reasons.

(For calculus, I had an 89. The differences are much more significant there.)

  • jonhohle  2 days ago

    I was a self taught TI-Basic programmer and ran into the 26 variable limit on a choose-your-own-adventure style game I wrote. I ended up breaking it into 3 programs so I had enough variables. Programs could invoke other programs so I could navigate between states.

  • IX-103  2 days ago

    The TI-85 also didn't have a lot of the built-in statistical functions that the TI-83 had.

    I also was the one person with a TI-85 in a school of 83s. But by the time I took the statistics class I knew enough BASIC to write my own programs to replicate the functionality that was missing.