I did the same but it was the TI-83 plus calculator. This was in middle school. Eventually I made games for it a more reasonable way. But I spent a month thinking this is how games were made, by knowing every possible image of the game and knowing how to map from one image state to another based on the controls.

There's something kind of plato's cave to say about it. When all you see are images on the screen you think that's the state.

Makes you wonder if there is something deeper we refuse to see because we got down to a level of state we could actually work with. Could it be RAM is not really the program state, and only what you think the program state is?

[–] gerryflap 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oh the TI-83 Plus also definitely was the subject of my experimentation during that time, or maybe a bit after it. But then with the programming mode and actual code. The TI-83 Plus is actually what got me the advice to study computer science. During a physics class we got a lesson on modelling in some silly programming language. Because it was going very slow, I translated the program/simulation my teacher was showing to the calculator. At the end of the lesson I came up to her and showed it to her. She was like "That's impressive, you should look into computer science". Somehow I hadn't considered that before