Topic: Proce55ing -- Java based multimedia made sexy and simple.

My lecturer at University turned me towards this when I kept complaining about Director & Flash being too slow or too well, crappy to do the kind of stuff I've been wanting to do. Yet, not wanting to take the plunge to learn C++ right now, he mentioned that some talented folk were playing around with a new Java too for teaching interaction design concepts.
http://proce55ing.net

I seriously recommend anyone who's interested in web based multimedia development to go and have a good look at this. The code it simple and clear, the knowledge base is alread fairly extensive given it's still in alpha and the examples are stunning. It's also being built by people who work in the education industry so everything is kinda geared towards teaching you really solid programming and design concepts that you don't fine in web tutorials. It also makes a great launchpad for learning Java, C++ or whatever else takes your fancy.

I downlaoded the alpha trial a week ago not having even touched Java before and I've already built several interesting demo programs with it. =)

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I can understand that InI, and I believe that future versions of processing will allow you to too switch to a full java mode so you could write your own pixel buffer anyways. But remember, this is about the education of concepts pretaining to interaction design, not programming in x, y or z language, which is why the "intermediate" mode of processing steps around all of that.

Obviously, a seasoned Java programmer isn't going to be terribly impressed with this, because they alread know how to do all of this. But the pure ease at which you can get started is what I'm taken with. I'd tried to learn Java several years back and found myself hitting walls left right and centre, maybe I'd be better at it now I have some more experience but it ceratinly wasn't this easy last time I looked.

The Bubble Chamber is groovy . I'm having problems viewing some of the others, The "Java CoffeeCup Thingy" appears and then nada.

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yeah - I guess I should have too. Sorry. Here's where I ran across it first: http://www.flight404.com/version6/index.html

Good links there as well. Amit Pitaru and Jared Tarbell are Flash legends, so to see them crossing over to proce55ing is interesting.

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I think the biggest drawcard of Proce55ing is it's cost. Having a completly free and open source multimedia development environment with the same userfriendlyness (is that a word?) usually only found in expensive commercial products it's bound to become a big favourite with the educational industry and the next generation of multimedia developers at large.

I'll definatly be using it as when I graduate in Dec 04 I sure as hell won't have the money to afford my own copy of Flash (about the same as Photoshop) let alone Director (about twice the price of Photoshop).

I wouldn't be surprised to see more flash developers crossing over in the next year or so either. It's also generating some heat umong some of the most renound director developer mailing lists.

I've also caught some discussions going on about trying to get the 3D capabilties of Proce55ing up to the standards the suema engine -- although I believe 3D/OpenGL is quite low on the developers todo list at the moment.

I really do think this has all the makings to gain a very strong and talented userbase, which is what's required for these kind of technologies to survive.

I also really need to stop staring my sentances with "I".

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Indeed, and it also provides a much easier way of digging into the more complex and powerfull programming langages if you want to.

Having tried my hand at Java before and found it infinatly fustrasting, this gives me the confidence thatr after playing with processing for a while, stepping up to full Java hopefully won't be as difficult.

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I don't think it's meant to be either.

I believe it's meant to be a tool for education, allowing students to learn and experiment with the concepts of multimedia programming without having to use something like flash or director, which are limited by the controlling companies, costly, and facilitate concepts that aren?t necessarily portable to other environments. Processing is meant to provide a neutral environment for developing skills in multimedia programming concepts without the overhead of having to learn the in's and out's of a particular language which makes the speed of the environment a secondary consideration. Not to say that speed isn?t important as the environment still has to be fast enough to provide the means of constructing working programs, but I?d assume the developers of processing don?t view application performance in the same way that a typical developer would builds applications for the commercial end user does.

Alternatively, you could force all the students to take a couple of computer science / software development classes first, but with the emergence of many new media focused degrees, this seems like an unnecessary burden to bear if the focus isn't on software / application development, and it provides the students with a greater amount of freedom to experiment, which I believe is a extremely important practice in this somewhat quirky field.

Indeed, if you were looking for a professional development environment, say if you were planning to develop a computer game, this wouldn't it. Instead you'd use C++ or if you were moving on from learning concepts in processing, Java with it's recent full screen exclusive mode and hardware accelerated volatile images for 2D, or the spout of new OpenGL bindings that have popped up for 3D, would make a logical "next step". This would be much harder to do if you were coming from a background in languages like Actionscript or Lingo (Like me) as you'd have to un-learn some nasty habits about those languages before you can fully grasp Java.

Oh, btw, I started learning full Java the other day. Turns out it wasn't that difficult to grasp after some inital minor hurdles -- Actually, I think all I needed was the right text as I'd read through a million and one "intro" tutorials online that tried to introduce Java by screwing around with awt and swing, which IMHO is a really crap way to go about trying to introduce the language.

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Yes, Java is the bomb, but not for a non computer science student like myself. Well, not really like myself, but you get the point.

The only problem I can see with Java is the steep learning curve it introduces, but with Processing that isn't really an issue any more. Although, flash still has many benifits gievn the broad userbase for the plugin, it's relative ease of use, the GUI nature (although IMHO a big drawback but many education institutions seem to love it for this, possibly because it makes their job easier) and it's relatively small footprint make it a viable solution for various low level multimedia applications. But if you want or need real power, yes, Java is definatly the Bomb.

Having played with full Java for a bit, I see little room for Director over the comming years given the new spout of Java 3D related developments (like JOGL and LWJGL and several developing 3D engines being built atop of these). Although, what I've learnt in Director is still quite applicable for a many Java based projects and Director still makes for a lighting fast prototyping environment, all be it one that's hard to port from unless your using a basic related language. So, whlist I see no future for director, it has tought me a lot.

In fact, Javascript, Actionscript and Director have taught me just about everything that Processing was basically setup to provide, and as such my second attempt to learn Java has been relatively painless. I spent a couple nights and train trpis reading a basic text and that about all I've needed to get started.

As for the PS Pong match, I said I was busy, and indeed I am. I've started it, but still want to play a little more. Alas, I'm really tied up this week so it'll probably be next weekend by the time I lob it back. I'm spending most of my x-mas holidays clearning this huge backlog of promises I've made, as my final year at Uni approches I've got to have a clean slate as the yearl long project I'm likely to undertake it huge to say the very least. The ps pong math will be slotted in between my other stuff when I can.

I'll definatly have to pop over to cfx web soon though, sounds like a nifty resource.

Question: I have started out learning actions script because i use flash mx2004. i am useing it and i find it very good. you guys say that it sucks. what is the major difference between that and what your useing. basically im saying whats so bad about flash because i think is good especailly for newbies like me because the actions script code is much easier than the java code. Ive tried to learn java b4 and i was push away from the complexity fo the code language. so in the end im asking what should i be useing to get the best results for creating web design and animation.

It all depends on what you want to do with the technology. If all you want to do is simple web animations and flash websites, then stick with flash, but if you want to tackle large multimedia productions like games, or anything outside of the web like new media instalation works, then flash probably isn't going to be powerfull or broad enough for most of that kind of work.

Additionally, proce55ing (which is built on top of java so you don't need to know java to use it) is a really good environment to learn various concepts of programming in a multimedia focused environment without being caught up in the flash paradim.