Casey Reas and Ben Fry Publish Processing Textbook

In order to lay out “our vision for how Processing could be used in a university classroom,” Casey Reas and Ben Fry published the Processing textbook, Processing: a programming handbook for visual designers and artists.

The textbook served as an essential guide to introduce computer programming to those within the visual arts community. This book leveraged six years of software development and educational insights gained from Reas’s teaching at UCLA and Fry’s time at the MIT Media Lab and Carnegie Mellon. Designed for individuals with minimal coding experience, the book guides those who are keen on exploring interactive and visual software creation. Through tutorials, professional project interviews and extension sections, the book thoroughly discusses the integration of software with arts like photography, drawing, animation and more.

This and other texts, such as the earliest one by Ira Greenberg, helped with the practicalities of teaching Processing once it was already initiated.