1 Notes
Aspiring programmers, listen up!
I’m a total geek at heart. If I had unlimited funds or unlimited time everyone knows I’d be sitting on a beach, drinking pina coladas … working on a robot.
Until that day comes, here are a couple cool projects to brush up on my skills:
Programming for Poets
This Thursday at Noisebridge there will be a class on programming for absolute beginners. If you’re not in SF or are more of a self-taught learner, not to worry, you may be able to pick it up on your own:
We’ll be using “processing” (http://www.processing.org), a simple yet powerful graphic programming language targeted to artists and designers. Learning to program a processing “sketch” is straightforward and quickly rewarding: you can get up to speed and produce algorithmic art and interactive games in a session or two.
Though it is simple, processing is a full-featured language, not a “toy”: the concepts you will learn (variables, loops, functions, arrays) are fundamental and necessary for programming in any other language.
You can run sketches right in your browser with no download or install. Try it: http://sketch.processing.org/ (click on the top left arrow to run). More information, including downloads for all computers can be found at http://www.processing.org. I suggest you try some of the tutorials: you may not even need a class!
Programming Bootcamp
One of the best ways to get started is to just get a book, find a couple of interested friends (ideally one of them has some rudimentary knowledge of the topic) and start trying things out.
In that spirit, Jonathan and I will be having our own HTML/CSS Bootcamp starting this Friday. Web design is something we’re both interested in and so we’ve picked a book and are going to start plugging away.
We both have some knowledge in this area, but mine is woefully outdated (I was last seen creating html based websites in 1997). I feel confident this will be a good refresher!
