From 2001, the Processing programming language has been an awesome alternative to, and I quote the website, “proprietary software tools with restrictive and expensive licenses, making it accessible to schools and individual students”. Being free and open source has encouraged a large community of engaged users to gather around it over the years and create some absolutely mind blowing works.

Now with Processing 2.0 out, its creators are advertising “faster graphics, new infrastructure for working with data, and enhanced video playback and capture. It also expands the potential of the programming environment. The new Modes feature allows other programming systems, such as JavaScript and Android, to be easily used from within the development environment.”

Which basically means it’ll work faster, and that it now has a bunch of new features and integration with other programming languages, which is always cool. Although most of the applications of Processing that I’ve seen so far involve visual work or new media installations,  the applications are (obviously) limitless. Just like other programming environments like Max or the free and open source Pd, Processing also supports MIDI and audio, so there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used to churn out awesome visual interfaces for interaction with sounds, kind of like what this guy did. Generative controllerism, anyone?

The Processing documentary embedded above is a bit unconventional, but more than informative and even fascinating, explaining the need for such tools and interacting with processors, as well as a bunch of other stuff. Check it out. And maybe you’ll be motivated to start learning to code using Processing.