Processing is a flexible free software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts. I have thought that I should test Processing some day because it looks interesting and easy to learn. I finally did sort of testing. Let’s start from basics and history.
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. According to Wikipedia Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks. The aim is ot get non-programmers started with programming through the instant gratification of visual feedback. Well documented, with many books available. There is also active online community platform OpenProcessing devoted to sharing and discussing Processing sketches. Processing builds on the Java language, but uses a simplified syntax and graphics programming model. It is freely available to many operating systems.
Processing has spawned another project, Wiring, which uses the Processing IDE with a collection of libraries written in the C++ language as a way to teach artists how to program microcontrollers. There are now two separate hardware projects, Wiring and Arduino, using the Wiring environment and language.
Processing software is interesting, but using Java application on desktop in the world where almost everything is on-line running on the web browser seems to be the norm. Luckily Processing has developed to support web enviroment as well.
Processing.js is the sister project of the popular Processing visual programming language, designed for the web. Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins. You write code using the Processing language, include it in your web page, and Processing.js does the rest. There are many Processing.js demos at Processing.js exhibition.
p5.js is a new inperpretion of the same idea as processing for web enviroment. p5.js is a new interpretation. p5.js is a JavaScript library that starts with the original goal of Processing, to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, and beginners, and reinterprets this for today’s web. p5.js can be seen as expanded Processing becase it it you are not limited to your drawing canvas, you can think of your whole browser page as your sketch! For this, p5.js has addon libraries that make it easy to interact with other HTML5 objects, including text, input, video, webcam, and sound. After quickly going through the examples and testing chaging them I was impressed by this system. In can draw 2D graphics and animation, draw 3D graphics, it can generate sounds, play video, do real time specrum analysis of sound coming from your PC mic, etc.. I need to spend some more time with this. This is cool and easy to use loking tool.