Since it first emerged in 2001, Processing has grown into a flourishing community of thousands of artists, designers, makers, and educators. It has redrawn the boundaries of art and technology, affecting communities in contexts as various as the classroom to the art museum to the hackerspace. After 12 years of development and being intensively taught in classrooms, the second edition of the Processing textbook was released in December 2014.

By teaching computer programming with the context of the visual arts, this book has introduced a new literacy with software, enabling designers and artists to create new media for the present, and to imagine future media that are beyond the capacities of current software tools. It offers a thorough introduction to Processing, an open-source programming language that is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity. Written by Processing’s cofounders, the book offers a definitive reference for students and professionals. Tutorial chapters make up the bulk of the book; advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and installation are discussed in interviews with their creators.

This second edition has been thoroughly updated, influenced by the seven years of Processing being taught in classrooms, computer labs, universities, art and design schools, and arts institutions since the first edition. Every chapter has been revised, and new chapters introduce more ways to work with data and geometry. New “synthesis” chapters offer discussion and worked examples of such topics as sketching with code, modularity, and algorithms. Interviews have been added that cover a wider range of projects. “Extension” chapters are now offered online so they can be updated to keep pace with technological developments in such fields as computer vision and electronics.