I've owned a TI-84+ calculator since around middle school (they are priced ridiculously everywhere on the planet, and this only exacerbates the problem because of purchasing power differences). However, it can provide a unique programming environment that rivals modern setups with a lot of learning potential (perhaps I would recommend NumWorks these days, but it's still $100.)
One of the earliest programs I wrote in middle school was a program to solve quadratic equations given the coefficients, then a program to compute the golden ratio by iterating the function f(x) = 1+1/x, and a Langston's ant program (all written in TI-BASIC on the device itself, with zero setup necessary.)
Later on in high school (late 2010s) as I learned C programming and data structures on my own, I read "Learn TI-83 Plus Assembly In 28 Days"[0] and got into assembly programming, eventually culminating in a Forth-based operating system[1] that runs from boot. You do need to have a computer for this setup, but the calculator comes with a cable in the box. It also was not uncommon to see other high school students download games or do light forms of hacking (mostly centered around storing data to be retrieved during exams.)
Contrast this to if you wanted to do assembly programming on a modern computer and understand the boot processes of your machine. It's significantly more complicated that even at the university level it is not taught in detail. The boot process[2] or memory mapping[3] for the 84+ can be understood relatively easily, and the assembly instructions are much simpler.
While I similarly lament the price point, the fact that you have essentially given/required the purchase of a standardized, self-contained, non-trivial computer to students could potentially be used to teach programming and computer science from an early age.
I programmed a ton of stuff on my calculator for various math classes. The one I was most proud of was a Newton's Method program that would show all the intermediate steps that simulated doing it by hand. That hour of programming saved me a solid 10 minutes in my calculus exam.
One of the earliest programs I wrote in middle school was a program to solve quadratic equations given the coefficients, then a program to compute the golden ratio by iterating the function f(x) = 1+1/x, and a Langston's ant program (all written in TI-BASIC on the device itself, with zero setup necessary.)
Later on in high school (late 2010s) as I learned C programming and data structures on my own, I read "Learn TI-83 Plus Assembly In 28 Days"[0] and got into assembly programming, eventually culminating in a Forth-based operating system[1] that runs from boot. You do need to have a computer for this setup, but the calculator comes with a cable in the box. It also was not uncommon to see other high school students download games or do light forms of hacking (mostly centered around storing data to be retrieved during exams.)
Contrast this to if you wanted to do assembly programming on a modern computer and understand the boot processes of your machine. It's significantly more complicated that even at the university level it is not taught in detail. The boot process[2] or memory mapping[3] for the 84+ can be understood relatively easily, and the assembly instructions are much simpler.
While I similarly lament the price point, the fact that you have essentially given/required the purchase of a standardized, self-contained, non-trivial computer to students could potentially be used to teach programming and computer science from an early age.
[0] https://tutorials.eeems.ca/ASMin28Days/lesson/toc.html
[1] https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80
[2] https://wikiti.brandonw.net/index.php?title=83Plus:State_of_...
[3] https://wikiti.brandonw.net/index.php?title=83Plus:Memory_Ma...