Overview \ Processing.org / quote 2 of 4
Trying things out beats tidy code structure
The Processing project encourages a style of work that builds code quickly, understanding that either the code will be used as a quick sketch, or ideas are being tested before developing a final project. This could be misconstrued as software engineering heresy. Perhaps we're not far from “hacking,” but this is more appropriate for the roles in which Processing is used. Why force students or casual programmers to learn about graphics contexts, threading, and event handling functions before they can show something on the screen that interacts with the mouse? The same goes for advanced developers: why should they always need to start with the same two pages of code whenever they begin a project?In another scenario, the ability to try things out quickly is a far higher priority than sophisticated code structure. Usually you don't know what the outcome will be, so you might build something one week to try an initial hypothesis, and build something new the next based on what was learned in the first week.