It was a general purpose computer, just a small one. Anything you could do on a "real" computer could be done on a calculator, albeit with tighter constraints. It might help to have some higher math objective to accomplish, because that would better utilize the preloaded system software. But in terms of the hardware? Probably not super relevant.

I made a lot of use of the TI-89 era CAS in college. But IMO the TI-83 era manuals taught me more about both math and computers than the subsequent generations could have.