I believe that coding is an essential skill for people making live digital visuals. At the same time, there’s no question that learning to code has been a big obstacle for visually creative people — especially as they have plenty of other things on their mind. You need somewhere to start, and you need to make the learning curve manageable. Processing has been a great tool for doing that, but the point isn’t to learn Processing — it’s to learn how to code.
For that reason, I’m thrilled that Dan Shiffman’s book Learning Processing is now in print and available
I know the book very well as I served as a technical editor during its development. We’ll be running an exclusive set of excerpts this week, but here’s a look at what’s included:
- Basics of code structure, pixels, interaction, and fundamentals like how the coordinate system works
- Using arrays to make lots of stuff appear on the screen, including particle systems
- Basics of images, video, data, and networking
- How to use object-oriented programming to make coding easier and more efficient
- Extending Processing with Java and more advanced coding techniques
By the time you’re done, you’ll be processing pixels, drawing generative visuals, and writing well-organized code.
To me, one of the real strengths of this book for teaching and learning is its strong emphasis on object-oriented programming, in a way people can actually understand. Explained properly, objects can really help keep your code clean. For some reason, this is often viewed as an “advanced” concept, but on the contrary, I’ve found using objects actually helps keep beginners from getting tripped up. And, to put it in visual terms, understanding objects is a terrific skill for getting lots of glitzy eye candy up on the screen.
Here’s what Dan has to say about the book (emphasis mine):
My goal for “Learning Processing” was to write something for the complete and total programming beginner. If you’ve never written a line of code before in your life, but want to get started creating your own digital media tools then I wrote this book for you. There are several other wonderful Processing books out there and I hope mine will complement them nicely. A special thanks to Casey, Ben, and Ira who kept encouraging and inspiring me as their books were being published.
The book is also geared towards the teacher. It’s not my belief that such a person will necessarily learn any new skills from the book (assuming they have a programming background), however, my hope is that the book will encourage and help facilitate the teaching of programming. It is structured with 10 lessons (complete with examples and exercises) and can act as a ready-made syllabus for a beginner interactive media / programming class. In fact, the book is modeled exactly on ITP’s Introduction to Computational Media course.
The book is available on Amazon.com. It shows out of stock, but those kind of screw-ups are common when a book has just come out (speaking as a published author here).
Stay tuned for those excerpts later this week; I’m editing them now!
See also: Dan Shiffman’s blog, Facebook Page, Official Site, free download of TOC and first chapter