Living Code

There is a lot of interesting stuff happening in Javascript land these days, even to the point of other languages targetting the browser as a runtime, but running on top of Javascript. You can run Scheme right in the browser, and by now everyone has probably heard of Objective-J (open-source coming soon), an Objective-C-like language used by 280 North to create their 280 Slides web application, inspired by Apple’s Keynote.

Since my last post about Processing, John Resig managed to port most of Processing to Javascript, so it is easier than ever to get started. Now instead of having to download the Java-based runtime, you can create Processing animations in your browser, within the limitations that it only targets very recent, beta browsers (Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, WebKit nightlies, no version of IE) and that not all of Processing is supported (no 3D, for instance, and my example from the earlier post does not run). Still, it is interesting and a lot of fun to play with. My seven-year-old son is fascinated with computer programming and looking to move beyond Scratch, so as part of that I stuck all the basic examples from Mr. Resig’s site into one page, with a menu to select them, and a button to run them. And I made them editable. You can write entirely new code too, of course, but the examples can help for getting started. I hope folks enjoy it.

Processing Playground

Of course, what my kids really want is a version of Scratch that we can extend to add some more features of our own. Scratch has been open-sourced, so we could possibly extend it, but it is built on Squeak Smalltalk, and I’ve never been very good at Smalltalk. Instead, I am porting it to Javascript. It is still in the early stages, but I’m making steady progress in my hour or so I have to code each evening, and my kids are eager to use it, so they keep me motivated and focussed.

Source code: sketch_080314a

I’ve been playing around some with Processing, this is the result. As I mentioned in my earlier article, Processing and NodeBox are quite similar. Processing has some more interactivity (better keyboard and mouse handling) built in, and it can do basic 3D. NodeBox has better color handling (gradients) and remarkable libraries (WordNet). But what it really comes down to is that NodeBox is Python (much easier to extend) and Processing is Java (still easier than straight Java, but a lot more code to do basic extensions). Now all we need is a quick-start programming environment like these for Flash (and before you tell me the Adobe Flash tools are for artists–I have used the Flash IDE and it is possibly the worst IDE I’ve ever experienced. Which is odd, because the Flex IDE is one of the best, better than XCode/Interface Builder in some ways).

All of which is the long way to say that I enjoyed making this little animation in Processing, but I’m ready to go back to working in Python now, thank you.

Well, I’ve been working off and on for a few days on a Processing applet. The only reason I like Processing better than NodeBox is because I can embed the results in an applet on my web site. At least, I could if WordPress didn’t keep stripping out the embedding markup.

[Update: I did finally figure out how to disable the auto-conversion. What a PITA. Now I just have to figure out what I've broken by doing that.]

Frustrations like this are why I was writing my own blogging software. The main holdup on writing my own blogging software was the fact that it is damn difficult to get anything but PHP to run persistently on Dreamhost. Actually, even WordPress runs as a CGI, so maybe its hard to run PHP persistently too. Anyway, it would take a lot of effort to move all my sites to a host that lets me run WSGI apps, but at moments like this, I think it would be worth it. WordPress has sucked yet more hours of my life away.

Going to bed, sick with loathing for WordPress. Again.