Code Toolkit: Python, Fall 2020: Resources

Home | Schedule | Resources | Asking for help

Course tools & platforms

Student Google Drive: This where you will submit your weekly homeworks and projects. You should have edit access to your folder, and view-only access to everything else.
Reading response Google Doc: Inside the Student Google Drive folder is a Google Doc where you can put all your readings responses for the semester. I'm including a link to it here as a shortcut. That doc includes instructions at the top for how to use it.
The Processing project website, processing.org: The official website of the Processing project. This contains much information about the Processing project, including links to additional tools, frequently asked questions, example projects, and ways to interact with the Processing community.
The Processing Development Environment (PDE): We will spend most of our time in this class coding within this environment. It is a helpful tool that makes it very easy to run and debug your code. You can download it here. And I have created some instructions (PDF) to walk you the process of downloading and installing.
The reference documentation for Processing Python: Probably the most important and useful part of that site for you will be the official reference documentation. [Note: Make sure that you are looking at the Python version of this, and not the Java version.] This is the definitive list of all commands that you have at your disposal. It is an exhaustive list of the fundamental building blocks of the Processing language. It is like a cross between a dictionary and an instruction manual. Even seasoned programmers refer back to this frequently in their work. Please bookmark this URL and refer to it frequently.
Official Python documentation website: This is like the Processing reference but for the Python programming language. The "Tutorial" and "Language Reference" sections will be useful for learning and reminding yourself about Python syntax. The "Library Reference" will be useful for things like data structures, which we will get to later in the semester. [Please note that this is for vesion 2.7 of Python. A newer version of Python has been releated (Python 3), but Processing works with Python 2 so that is what we'll be using to start.]
GitHub and GitHub Gists: These are extremely useful tools for saving and managing source code projects. We will be using Gists this semester for communication about your bugs and syntax questions. Explanation of that is in our website's Help section. More information about using Git will be provided later in the semester.

Related, but highly-optional texts:

Getting Started with Processing, 2nd edition by Casey Reas and Ben Fry (founders of the Processing project)

This book offers concise descriptions of various topics, and good, short code examples. It is useful, but it is based on the Java version of Processing. That means that it will be helpful for explaining building blocks and basic bits of functionality, but will not be helpful for doing that with Python syntax. Perhaps a Python version of this book would be nice!

It elaborates on material included in the online reference documentation. If you would like to take a look at this, let me know and I can share some digital scans for parts of it.

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists — Also by Casey Reas and Ben Fry
This is a nicely designed book. Many of the examples included here are also available in the PDE, in the "Examples" section. There will be 1 or 2 readings from this throughout the semester, but I will scan them for you.

Form+Code includes some really nice illustrations and good examples of what programming can do as an art and design tool. I will also share some excerpts from this text at points during the semester as examples of interesting things that can be done with software.

Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming, Images, Animation, and Interaction, by Daniel Shiffman. This is a textbook style overview of the language with many examples and exercises. Some people find it very helpful.

Online help fora and communities

processing.org discussion forum: This is a fairly high traffic forum. Don't be intimidated, people post a full range of questions from beginner to advanced.
Stack Overflow: This can be a very helpful place to ask programming questions online. You get a very mixed quality of responses, but they have a vote up / down system which can help parse the replies. There are questions tagged Processing, and a huge number of Python questions.

Examples of related work

This colletion of links may be useful in helping you develop ideas and inspiration for midterm and final projects.

OpenProcessing.org: This is a nice community site where people in the Processing enthusiasts upload and share their work. It is a great way to see what other people at all levels are doing and experimenting with using Processing.
processing.org exhibition section: The Processing website itself includes a section that features interesting projects implemented in Processing. It is similar to OpenProcessing.org but curated. This could be a good place to look for inspiration for your course projects.
Zach Lieberman: Lieberman is a very talented creative programmer. He doesn't use Processing, but rather uses a platform called openFrameworks, which is very similar (but is built on C++ instead of Java). Zach's twitter is a place where he often shares sketches and tests of interesting works-in-progress.
Funky Forest, by Emily Gobeille & Theodore Watson: This is a somewhat older project, also implemented in openFrameworks, that shows how creative programming can be utilized in larger, installation-based projects.
Camille Utterback: Utterback is a talented interactive technology artist who often makes work that involves large projections and the body.
Chris Sugrue: Sugrue is another artist/designer/programmer who makes fun and engaging interactive installations using Processing and openFrameworks.
we feel fine: An older project implement in Processing that continues to impress.
Joshua Davis: Some of this work feels a bit dated now, but Davis has been an active creative programmer for decades. He got started before Processing was around and was very active using Flash and ActionScript.