Chapter 10. Optimizing TI-BASIC programs
This chapter covers
Being a programmer means knowing not only how to write programs but how to write them well. In all of the chapters so far, I’ve emphasized the importance of creating programs that are not only correct but are also fast and small. Your TI-83+ or TI-84+ calculator has either a 6 MHz or 15 MHz processor, 24 KB of RAM, and somewhere between 160 KB and 1.5 MB of Archive (ROM). You can archive programs to free up RAM. When you run a program, it must fit entirely in RAM, which means that the largest TI-BASIC program you can run is smaller than 24 KB. It’s important to be clever in order to fit complex interfaces on the relatively tiny screen of your calculator, but being sufficiently skilled to write small, fast code is at least as valuable. If your programs are faster, they can do more; if they’re smaller, you can cram in more features. You’ve been learning skills up to this point to write code that’s correct and efficient; in this chapter, you’ll learn more tips to fit your programs within your calculator’s RAM and make them fast enough to impress your programs’ users.