Yes, it's easy to write a TI-BASIC program on a TI graphic calculator. It's barely less easy to open your web browser, type in "jsfiddle" or "shadertoy," and get coding environments that have considerably better and more instant feedback than what's available on your TI. And that's before opening up your app store and searching for "compiler" or "IDE."
Yeah you can download an IDE and then not run the code, or run the code by connecting to a server, which you might not even have internet access at the time. And even then you're probably not able to make asset rich games on them, or create graphics, save them, and call them in your program (game). Design websites, yeah I guess. Create shell scripts, yeah no problem. But games are another story. Not impossible, I'm sure, but not easy.
Yes, the TI had this. I would spend 30 minutes drawing a dragon image and saving it, then loading it in my choose your own adventure text game, without breaking a sweat, changing things and iterating quickly while sitting through an algebra class where I knew everything that was taught instantly (because I already used it in code) where all the other kids needed the rest of the class plus more to understand.
I would use the greek alphabet as makeshift sprites, the letter "O" as a ball and the equals sign "=" as bricks in an alleyway clone, etc. I'm not saying kids should still be expected to do this. There should be newer and better tools, focused on that creation.
To make sure I wasn't hallucinating, using an old Droid Ultra, I downloaded an app named "Mobile C (C/C++ Compiler)", turned on airplane mode, launched the app, compiled and ran hello world, than compiled and ran some demo programs that app is bundled with (many of which are simple multimedia demos). That's not opinion.
I looked it up, and that is pretty interesting. It compiles offline, and even has SDL? I didn't think Apple would allow that. I'll have to check into this more. Thanks for mentioning a specific app.
