The bane of the single line display! It's amazing what constraints like that can do to your imagination and skills, though. You have to be very clever.
I programmed all day at school for years on the Casio version:
I learned programming on a Sharp MZ-80K. Rectangular sheet metal case with an amber monochrome monitor and a built in cassette tape drive for storage. The keyboard keys were neatly squared up, zero ergonomics. You could flip it open like the hood of a car. And I faintly recall that there was some kind of UV erasable EEprom inside, not sure what for.
All of which are BASIC commands, as well as GTS (go to subroutine, probably like GOSUB).
In addition, it would’ve lent itself well to loading programs from cassette (see TI-99 or TRS-80 of the era).
I have a 1984 Sharp PC-1246 handheld which is surprisingly programmable despite being about the size of a modern smartphone, an actual calculator form factor, and, you know, from 1984.
I programmed all day at school for years on the Casio version:
https://www.vintage-calculators.nl/page89.html
- NEW
- GTO (GOTO)
- LST (LIST)
- END
- RUN
- FOR
- NXT (NEXT)
- LOD (LOAD)
- STP (STOP)
- RTN (RETURN)
All of which are BASIC commands, as well as GTS (go to subroutine, probably like GOSUB).
In addition, it would’ve lent itself well to loading programs from cassette (see TI-99 or TRS-80 of the era).
I have a 1984 Sharp PC-1246 handheld which is surprisingly programmable despite being about the size of a modern smartphone, an actual calculator form factor, and, you know, from 1984.