Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel Shiffman
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Category: Book
List Price: $49.95
Buy New: $40.90
You Save: $9.05 (18%)
New (22) Used (7) from $40.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 31440
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 450
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0123736021
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9780123736024
ASIN: 0123736021
Publication Date: August 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
This book teaches you the basic building blocks of programming needed to create cutting-edge graphics applications including interactive art, live video processing, and data visualization. A unique lab-style manual, the book gives graphic and web designers, artists, and illustrators of all stripes a jumpstart on working with the Processing programming environment by providing instruction on the basic principles of the language, followed by careful explanations of select advanced techniques. Within these pages, ITP (Tisch School of the Arts, New York University) professor Daniel Shiffman demonstrates the fundamentals of programming that will expand your understanding of what is possible in the world of computer graphics. By travelling beyond the confines of proprietary software, you will be empowered to create your own custom design tools. * A friendly start-up guide to Processing, the visual artist s free, open-source alternative to expensive software and daunting programming languages. * No previous experience required this book is for the true programming beginner! * Step-by-step examples, thorough explanations, hands-on exercises, and simple code samples support your learning curve. Source code and supplemental tutorials are also available through an online companion site.
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| Customer Reviews:
Best learner's book ever. November 16, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 Great introduction November 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a perfect place to start for learning how to program with Processing. The methodology is very well thought out in a progressive series of steps, allowing one to build upon, complexify and extend previous examples in the book. It also allows one to grasp general programming principles applicable to other environments. It would be great to see this book translated into French one day!
Fills a much needed void in textbooks for designers/non- programmers September 15, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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!
Learning to Program via Processing September 10, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
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
The Friendliest Book August 30, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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).
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