I love seeing everyone share their stories if learning on a TI-8x.
My school recommended the 83+ but I ended up with an 85, probably because it was on sale or something. This meant I couldn't share games that all the kids had in their 83 so I got my start by copying them by hand and trying to figure out the syntax differences by guessing. After one of those I was able to start making my cheater programs and aced geometry because of it.
I went with a TI-89 and had one good friend in HS that had one as well. This would have been late 99-00, I believe.
Fondest memories were recreating my school C++ project in TI BASIC and showing it to my teacher, using utilities to restore apps and data after a "reset" in math class so I could skip over memorizing equations, grayscale erotica, and of course Phoenix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke6DnczjaK0