Customer Reviews

Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the past 10 months I have returned to programming computers, having taken a decade off doing such to produce dance music, work as a surgical nurse, and currently to do CAD/CAM programming for a stone manufacturer. In the nineties I coded a bit in pure assembly, but have never coded in a high level language, never one with objects or garbage collection, and honestly haven't coded at all for 12 years.

This book should have been the first book I picked up when I was staging my return, as it is the first beginner level programming book to hold my interest, and one which enables the user to work with first class multimedia applications while still coding at the beginner level. Data visualization has really taken off, and Casey Reas and Ben Fry's Processing language is a beautiful abstraction on top of Java for creating rich media, generative art, and visualizations.

I've built a small coding library of 75-100 retained books from the 400+ I bought from Amazon in the past 10 months, and this is absolutely the first book I should have read - without a doubt. Processing, the language, is an absolutely wonderful platform for learning to program - and I wish I could say that I first learned to program using this book and Processing.

If you are curious about learning how to program, "Learning Processing" gives you a much more interesting set of tools to work with for learning the basics - I think this will lead to continued interest in some who might otherwise give up early.

I have (but have not read cover to cover) the other Processing related books - "Processing" by Reas and Fry, "Processing" by Ira Greenberg, and "Visualizing Data" by Fry - and I think the reason I haven't completed them is because they are intermediate level programming books, and will make more sense to read now, having completed "Learning Processing."

Finally, I think it's important to mention that I have noticed that it is increasingly obvious when books are written by educators, as opposed to professional coders. There is a certain command of the readers attention span that only teachers/educators can harness, and this is no exception.

I highly recommend this book, which perhaps, could have been titled more aptly "Learning to Program via Processing," but which was a fabulous read nonetheless!

grantmichaels

This is my second amazon review ever in seven years. I mention this to emphasize how much I believe in this book. I teach an introductory programming class to artists/designers at a University. Finding a good textbook has not been easy. I am very happy to finally find what I consider the "missing" book. I will definitely be adopting this book as one of the required texts for my Intro to Interactive class in the spring. I am very impressed with the content. It is very well suited for my students who are not fluent (and are sometimes quite intimidated) in programming lingo and concepts:) Other books cover the fundamentals usually in one chapter, and get into the key concepts very quickly. This book is paced better for the novice, and, as another reviewer noted, is very friendly and inviting. Job very well done!

I just received this book yesterday, and I have to say that this book is probably the friendliest "instructional" book. I say instructional, instead of programming because as a designer, I can comprehend the concepts that Shiffman talks about. It's even friendlier than some Photoshop and Flash books that I've read through.

I have both Shiffman's and Casey Reas' book (last year), and I'm starting Shiffman's book. Casey's book is for intermediates. I would even recommend this book to high school students who are interested in programming, however, most high school students are professional programmers already (look at the kids that work on Facebook).

I was really hesitant on sinking money on Yet Another Programming Book since I had bought a few in the past and they all failed to make things understandable or digestable. All the books before this had the pacing all wrong, too. This book does a really good job of slowly introducing one concept at a time.

Processing is perhaps the best "learning" language. After about halfway through the book, you may start to realize the limitations of Processing.

My only gripe is that the book doesn't cover certain topics enough, like Return type. Also there should've been more attention paid to Boolean perhaps. Still, these are mere nitpicks when I consider how easily and comfortably I was able to learn Processing with this book.

There are three popular books that teach Processing to a reasonably advanced level: this one, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, by Reas and Fry, and Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, by Greenberg. They are all aimed at beginning programmers who are interested in graphics and computer art. They are all good books but Learning Processing is the best of the three. While they are all well written, the thing that sets Learning Processing apart is its overall organization. My impression is that Greenberg and Reas and Fry write like artists who can't wait to show you the next cool thing you can do; in so doing, they get ahead of the reader's understanding. Shiffman gets to the cool stuff, too - but every step is clearly spelled out and the skills and concepts build clearly and logically. I have all three books; this is the one I would choose if I could have only one but it's good to have all three because they each have different examples and a slightly different emphasis on advanced topics.

I am a college professor at a small California Community College. I stumbled onto processing about three years ago, just when I was designing a new 'first course' in programming. I decided at the time to go with an existing textbook which used Java as a first language. I was not happy with the results.

When I got a look at the Shiffman text, I got excited about processing again. I used other material to supplement in areas such as number systems, Von Newmann architecture, and the rest. I introduced Processing about 1/3 of the way through the class and students picked it up very quickly using the text. We went through about 11 chapters in about 8 weeks, and students developed quite a few cool interactive and graphical apps with loops, conditionals, arrays, File I/O and even a few objects! And the best part is that they enjoyed it!

I gave students a 'Course Feedback Survey' at the end where they rated aspects on a scale of 1-10 (1 = strongly disagree, 10 = totally agree). They gave the question "The textbook did a great job of explaining the material" an average of 9 out of 10.

I am adapting the course to teach it fully-online next Fall, and I'm excited about using the Shiffman text again. I was able to contact the author who provided additional support for me to work up some decent PPT slides to use for the class.

The book goes well beyond what I am using it for, and introduces quite a few topics that I have not reviewed or used (yet). It has a good index, is sprinkled with graphic diagrams, and has excellent supplements online (example code and such).

I am also expecting great things from the students that used this book in their next programming class (standard CS1 with Java). I might even use some of the more advanced examples for my CS1 class too!

Congrats Daniel on a job well done!

I have all the processing books. This is an essential purchase for many reasons.
The author of the book knows his topic inside and out and doesn't want to leave anyone behind. There are no ambiguities in terms of the syntax, code, etc. Nothing is left out. It is never ever confusing. You can follow every example, implement the code, and get a result.

Even if you are a pro, and simply need to check out a small detail to do something specific, this book is a great resource because it includes all the steps to make something work, rather than simply a syntax example.

The book is divided into conceptually clear chapters that include enough detail to learn the topic and code some great programs.

The author's approach to processing and programming is particularly invaluable, again for the learner and the experienced programmer. It shows you how to build a program step by step, adding to its complexity, which is great training for good programming habits.

I highly recommend owning at least one copy of this book!

I'm a semi-experienced programmer who is new to visual arts. I thought that this book might have been too basic for my needs, but I'm having a blast going through it. The examples are lively, but without that "golly, aren't we having fun!?" tone that I find in other beginner programming books. Even though some examples are very basic, I appreciate the care with which the author writes them. I can still remember being a beginner, and I see that he can too.

Leafing through the future chapters, I think "Wow, I'm going to be able to do that in a few days. Sweet!!".

Great book for those interested in a good book for learning processing. It is also appropriate for those familiar with programming, but have yet to learn processing. A good purchase.

I had taken a course in Processing last semester and this was the text we primarily learned from. The online resources along with the book provide an excellent foundation in learning processing. This book is very easy to read and provides great examples of code to be developed further by the reader.