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• 1 2022-04-22T12:08:55-07:00 Processing (language) 10 on the programming language Processing plain 2022-05-03T23:27:37-07:00

  Created by Casey Reas and Ben Fry

  
  According to its creators,

  "When we started Processing in 2001, the goal was to bring ideas and technologies out of MIT and into the larger world. One idea was the synthesis of graphic design with computer science, combining the visual principles of design with ways of thinking about systems from computer science. We also wanted to share a way of working with code where things are figured out during the process of writing the software. We called this sketching with code. A third idea was to share what we had learned about how to teach programming to designers — to share this beyond the people we could teach directly through our workshops and classrooms. We wanted to spread this as far as we could."

  
  Processing, created over 20 years ago by Casey Reas and Ben Fry is a kind of hybrid language, an api that runs on top of Java. It compiles to Java and is run in a Java Virtual Machine. According to their article, "Processing: A Modern Prometheus," they designed the language for "making pictures, for choreographing animation, and for creating interactive work." Since then, it has been adopted by countless artists, giving rise to new ways of creative computing.
  
  Long-time Processing forum moderator Jeremy Douglass refers to it as a dialect of Java, at least the original Processing.  Reas and Fry refer to the language as a hybrid between their additions and Java, and so what better language for this work about hybridity? It is a milieu for programmer-artist or artist-programmer to unlock art in programming and of course the art that is programming.
  
  Since its origins, the language has been extended and ported into other languages, perhaps most notably in P5.js.  That version of the language does not compile to Java because it is made of JavaScript.  P5.js, therefore, is not a dialect of Java. According to Douglass "For P5.js to turn into Java would be like a bird turning into a fish," a statement that rings with irony when recalling those boids that became fish. 
  
  Source: https://medium.com/processing-foundation/a-modern-prometheus-59aed94abe85