Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art

PROCESSING: CREATIVE CODING AND COMPUTATIONAL ART
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learning a programming language is much easier than learning a verbal or natural language.
Now let’s tackle some of the new terms I just threw at you and look at just a little
processing code.
First, what does it mean to “structure” your code?
Here is a simple Processing program that draws a black rectangle on a white background;
it’s not too ground-breaking, but it is a nice rectangle (see Figure 2-1 for an image of the
rectangle that the code produces).
size(400, 400);
background(255);
noStroke();
fill(0);
rect(width/4, height/4, width/2, height/2);
Figure 2-1. Rectangle created using an
unstructured coding approach
A program this simple wouldn’t necessitate structuring your code any further. So, at this
point, if all you need to make are single squares, you’re done. Congratulations! However,
imagine instead of having 5 lines of code, you had 50, or 500, or 5,000? It becomes very
difficult to understand and maintain a program when it reaches a certain scale. There are
ways of structuring your code, kind of like using paragraphs to organize a chapter, that
make a large program more manageable. In addition, there are structural ways of simplifying
your program, reducing redundant lines of code, and ultimately increasing your coding
efficiency and possibly the program’s performance (these are all good things).
Function-based (procedural) vs. object-oriented structure
There are a number of ways of structuring your code—I’ll discuss two ways it’s done in
Processing. The first way uses functions (also referred to as procedures, or subroutines—
different words essentially describing the same technique). Functions are reusable blocks