We’ve discovered a lot today… coding can be intimidating but it’s important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Give yourself time and be patient, it’s not uncommon to get stuck on a tricky bug for hours. Make sure to take breaks from your screen; go for a walk.
I’ll leave you with some advice from Mark-David Hosale of York University’s Digital Media program.
“Lead with your ideas. Try not to think through technology, but through ideas. Very often when people are developing ideas in this field, they're already thinking about how to implement them and what technologies to use. That can become a barrier to creative thought, because you find yourself limiting your ideas to what you think you can achieve technically. Whereas if you work the other way around and explore new areas, maybe you’ll achieve things that you weren't expecting you could achieve.
By the same token when it comes to learning computational art/coding, my advice is: Only learn what you have to, and let the project drive that. A good way of working is: propose an interesting idea and then start to explore how you can solve achieving that idea.” - Mark-David Hosale (2020)
Don’t drown yourself in the details of coding, put your ideas first, and learn what you have to in order to make them a reality. You are more capable of creating computational art than you might think. Especially now that the machines and tools of John Whitney's dreams exist, there is so much to explore!
We recommend reading Daniel Shiffman’s “The Nature of Code”, to learn more about creative coding.
Feel free to send me your creative code experiments! plu.ral@aol.com
Check out my friend Jonah Grindler's take on this tutorial:
Sources:
Lamb, C., & Rubinger, D. (2017). Stacking Up: A snapshot of Canada’s developer talent. Toronto, ON: Brookfield Institute. Retrieved November 20, 2020, from http://brookfieldinstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/BrookfieldInstitute_StackingUp.pdf
Miller, A., Mr. (2015, October 27). Recreating Vintage Computer Art with Processing [Video]. Retrieved November 20, 2020, from https://youtu.be/LaarVR1AOvs
Mleczko, A., Ms. (2020, May 20). How many developers are there in the world in 2020? Retrieved November 20, 2020, from https://www.future-processing.com/
Shiffman, D., Mr. (2017, February 8). Coding Challenge #55: Mathematical Rose Patterns. Retrieved November 20, 2020, from https://youtu.be/f5QBExMNB1I
http://brookfieldinstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/BrookfieldInstitute_StackingUp.pdf
Whitney, J., Sr. (1968). Experiments in motion graphics. Retrieved November 20, 2020, from https://archive.org/details/experimentsinmotiongraphics