They are enabled, kind of, you need to plug the device into its bigger brother. ...

divbzero · on Feb 14, 2020

> you need to plug the device into its bigger brother

This exactly is the challenge. If your first computer is a mobile device, you would not have that “bigger brother” available.

iOS does have Swift Playgrounds [1] and Android has the excellent Termux [2] but access to the built-in JavaScript engine would open a whole new set of possibilities.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

[2]: https://termux.com/

I was introduced to programming on a dinky little graphing calculator. My hope is that other “first computers” could offer similar opportunities for tinkering.

pjmlp · on Feb 14, 2020

Agreed, but as mentioned there are also on device coding environments.

On iOS you also have Pythonista, Continuous, Shaderific, Codea, all much better than learning FX-4500p, FX-850P Basic.

Sadly on Android, most of the alternatives are quite lacking versus the iOS variants in capabilities and quality.