Introduction
"Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community. Since 2001, It has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology.
Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach computer programming fundamentals within a visual context, Processing evolved into a development tool for professionals.
Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production. Learn more at the Processing website."
Processing, 2015
Triangles Shooting Circles
This tool was used to write Java based code, with a simpler syntax and learn about variables, functions in a very easy way without the hassle of installing a compiler and using a complete and easy to use documentation.
Using functions that come with Processing and a few if statements it was possible to create shapes and make them react to user interaction. Pressing the left key, the value of the x axis steadily decreases moving the triangular shape left, while pressing the right key increases the same value moving the object on the opposite direction. Additionally, pressing the shift key activates movement on a circle to move negatively on the y axis (up), away from the current position the triangle.
Processing : Triangle Movement from Cristiano A. on Vimeo.
On a second session additional code was added to not let the triangle escape the canvas, however rather than trapping the shape within the limits of the window, it would let it leave the canvas and return on the opposite side (as shown in the video above).
Conclusion
Processing proved to be not only a useful tool to learn the basics of programming but also for big projects. It's quite easy to get into including since it has a simple yet well organized documentation. However, projects break often when the software is updated.