Program

An organized list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a predetermined manner. Without programs, computers are useless. A program is like a recipe. It contains a list of ingredients (called variables) and a list of directions (called statements) that tell the computer what to do with the variables. The variables can represent numeric data, text, or graphical images. There are many programming languages with C and Basic are the most common.

In the context of the graphing calculators, these show up in the PRGM menu on the TI-8x calculators and the Var-Link screen of the TI-89 family calculators. They can be TI-Basic or assembly. The program file type can also store text that isn´t valid code, though this of course will cause a syntax error if the calculator is told to run the program. On the computer, these have a file extension ending in the letter p (in the case of TI-89 Flash family assembly programs, it is z instead). Flash Applications are generally not referred to as programs in order to differentiate between the two.