Processing

Processing is a programming language geared towards visual artists, but it comes in handy for a lot of other purposes as well. Here are some of its finer points:

  • Open source
  • Integrated IDE (see below)
  • Lots of demos and tutorials online
  • Several useful libraries available (e.g., OpenGL, video, network)
  • Cross platform (it’s Java-based)

Most of all, it’s very quick to program something graphical up. So I’ve used it to make little image/movie widgets, programmatically generate complex PostScript files that I then edit with Illustrator, and test visual stimuli. Processing