If you've ever fancied getting to grips with a bit of
programming and have an hour or so to spare, check out this free online
course.
How would you like to learn a bit of programming? Oh, we know,
it can be a bit difficult; we've seen otherwise excellent minds reduced
to jelly simply trying to comprehend some of the basics of Python. But
don't let that put you off Hello Processing!
It's based on Processing, an
excellently simple - and free - programming language built with
designers and visual artists in mind. It's made so that you can quickly
get impressive graphical results out of it, while at the same time
learning some of the important fundamentals of computer programming.
It takes the form of an hour-long video tutorial, written and presented Processing expert Daniel Shiffman,
split into short sections followed by time to write and modify a
program. For the introductory part of each section you just see video,
and then when you get to roll your sleeves up and write your own code
the screen splits into three sections: the video tutorial, the code
editor and the code display window where you see the end results of your
program.
After a quick introduction explaining what computer programming's all
about and what you can do with it, there are four main sections in
which you'll learn how to create shapes, colour them in, use input to
animate them and finally use touch or mouse click events to decide if
the code does one thing or another. After this you'll know enough
Processing to write your own creative programs and, hopefully, feel much
better equipped to learn its more advanced functions.
Daniel's an animated and engaging teacher, and we reckon this is a
much more rewarding way to get a handle on the basics of code than the
dry, old-fashioned way of working through a set of written tutorials. If
you have an hour to spare and you've always wished you had a better
understanding of computers, why not give it a go? Words: Jim McCauley
