This question is covered in the FAQ on Processing.org, but still tends to reappear on the board every few months (most recently here). Someone once described Processing syntax as a dialect of Java, which sounds about right to me. It’s syntax that we’ve added on top of Java to make things a little easier for a particular work domain (roughly, making visual things). There’s also a programming environment that significantly simplifies what’s found in traditional IDEs. Plus there’s a core API set (and a handful of core libraries) that we’ve built to support this type of work. If we did these in isolation, none would really stick out:

• The language changes are pretty minimal. The big difference is probably how they integrate with the IDE that’s built around the idea of sitting down and quickly writing code (what we call sketching). We don’t require users to first learn class definitions or even method declarations before they can show something on the screen, which helps avoid some of the initial head-scratching that comes from trying to explain “public class” or “void” or beginning programmers. For more advanced coders, it helps Java feel a bit more like scripting. I use a lot of Perl for various tasks, and I wanted to replicate the way you can write 5-10 lines of Perl (or Python, or Ruby, or whatever) and get something done. In Java, you often need double that number of lines just to set up your class definitions and a thread.

• The API set is a Java API. It can be used with traditional Java IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, whatever) and a Processing component can be embedded into other applications. But without the rest of it (the syntax and IDE), Processing (API or otherwise) it would not be as widely used as it is today. The API grew out of Casey and I’s work, and our like/dislike of various approaches used by libraries that we’ve used: Postscript, QuickDraw, OpenGL, Java AWT, even Applesoft BASIC. Can we do OpenGL but still have it feel as simple as writing graphics code on the Apple ][? Can we simplify current graphics approaches so that they at least feel simpler like the original QuickDraw on the Mac?

• The IDE is designed to make Java-style programming less wretched. Check out the Integration discussion board to see just how un-fun it is to figure out how the Java CLASSPATH and java.library.path work, or how to embed AWT and Swing components. These frustrations and complications sometimes are even filed as bugs in the Processing bugs database by users who have apparently become spoiled by not having to worry about such things.

If pressed, perhaps the language itself is probably the easiest to let go of—witness the Python, Ruby and now JavaScript versions of the API, or the C++ version that I use for personal work (when doing increasingly rare C++ projects). And lots of people build Processing projects without the preprocessor and PDE.

In some cases, we’ve even been accused of not being clear that it’s “just Java,” or even that Processing is Java with a trendy name. Complaining is easier than reading, so there’s not much we can do for people who don’t glance at the FAQ before writing their unhappy screeds. And with the stresses of the modern world, people need to relieve themselves of their angst somehow. (On the other hand, if you’ve met either of us, you’ll know that Casey and I are very trendy people, having grown up in the farmlands of Ohio and Michigan.)

However, we don’t print “Java” on every page of Processing.org for a very specific reason: knowing it’s Java behind the scenes doesn’t actually help our audience. In fact, it usually causes more trouble than not because people expect it to behave exactly like Java. We’ve had a number of people who copy and pasted code from the Java Tutorial into the PDE, and are confused when it doesn’t work.

(Edit – In writing this, I don’t want to understate the importance of Java, especially in the early stages of the Processing project. It goes without saying that we owe a great deal to Sun for developing, distributing, and championing Java. It was, and is, the best language/environment on which to base the project. More about the choice of language can be found in the FAQ.)

But for as much trouble as the preprocessor and language component of Processing is for us to develop (or as irrelevant it might seem to programmers who already code in Java), we’re still not willing to give that up—damned if we’re gonna make students learn how to write a method declaration and “public class Blah extends PApplet” before they can get something to show up on the screen.

I think the question is a bit like the general obsession of people trying to define Apple as a hardware or software company. They don’t do either—they do both. They’re one of the few to figure out that the distinction actually gets in the way of delivering good products.

Now, whether we’re delivering a good product is certainly questionable—the analogy with Apple may, uh, end there.

“Mapping Iran’s Online Public” is a fascinating (and very readable) paper from a study by John Kelly and Bruce Etling at Harvard’s Berkman Center. From the abstract:

In contrast to the conventional wisdom that Iranian bloggers are mainly young democrats critical of the regime, we found a wide range of opinions representing religious conservative points of view as well as secular and reform-minded ones, and topics ranging from politics and human rights to poetry, religion, and pop culture. Our research indicates that the Persian blogosphere is indeed a large discussion space of approximately 60,000 routinely updated blogs featuring a rich and varied mix of bloggers.

In addition to identifying four major poles (Secular/Reformist, Conservative/Religious, Persian Poetry and Literature, and Mixed Networks.) A number of surprising findings include details like the nature of discourse (such as the prominence of the poetry and literature category) or issues of anonymity:

…a minority of bloggers in the secular/reformist pole appear to blog anonymously, even in the more politically-oriented part of it; instead, it is more common for bloggers in the religious/conservative pole to blog anonymously. Blocking of blogs by the government is less pervasive than we had assumed.

They also produced images to represent the nature of the networks, seen in the thumbnail at right. The visualization is created with a force-directed layout that iteratively groups data points closer based on their content. It’s useful for this kind of study, where the intent is to represent or identify larger groups. In this case, the graphic supports what’s laid out in the text, but to me the most interesting thing about the study is the human-centered tasks of the project, such as the work done by hand in reviewing and categorizing such a large number of sites. It’s this background work that sets it apart from many other images like it which tend to rely too heavily on automation.

(The paper is from April 6, 2008 and I first heard about after being contacted by John in June. Around 1999, our group had hosted students that he was teaching in a summer session for a visit to the Media Lab. And now a few months later, I’m digging through my writing todo pile.)

In response to the last post, a message from João Antunes:

…you should also read this story about Panic’s old MP3 player applications.

The story includes how they came to almost dominate the Mac market before iTunes, how AOL and Apple tried to buy the application before coming out with iTunes, even recollections of meetings with Steve Jobs and how he wanted them to go work at Apple - it’s a fantastic indie story.

Regarding the Mac ‘indie’ development there’s this recent thesis by a Dutch student, also a good read.

I’d read the story about Audion (the MP3 player) before, and failed to make the connection that this was the same Audion that I rediscovered in the O’Reilly interview from the last post (and took a moment to mourn its loss). It’s sad to think of how much better iTunes would be if the Panic guys were making it — iTunes must be the first MP3 player that feels like a heavy duty office suite. In the story, Cabel Sasser (the other co-founder of Panic) begins:

Is it just me? I mean, do you ever wonder about the stories behind everyday products?

What names were Procter & Gamble considering before they finally picked “Swiffer”? (Springle? Sweepolio? Dirtrocker?) What flavors of Pop-Tarts never made it out of the lab, and did any involve lychee, the devil’s fruit?

No doubt the backstory on the Pop-Tarts question alone could be turned into a syndicated network show to compete with LOST.

Audion is now available as a free download, though without updates since 2002, it’s not likely to work much longer (seemed fine with OS X 10.4, though who knows with even 10.5).

By way of Darling Furball, a blog post by Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic, on his personal opinion of Apple’s gated community of software distribution, the iTunes App Store:

Some of my most inviolable principles about developing and selling software are:

1. I can write any software I want. Nobody needs to “approve” it.
2. Anyone who wants to can download it. Or not.
3. I can set any price I want, including free, and there’s no middle-man.
4. I can set my own policies for refunds, coupons and other promotions.
5. When a serious bug demands an update, I can publish it immediately.
6. If I want, I can make the source code available.
7. If I want, I can participate in a someone else’s open source project.
8. If I want, I can discuss coding difficulties and solutions with other developers.

The iTunes App Store distribution model mangles almost every one of those tenets in some way, which is exasperating to me.

But, the situation’s not that clear-cut.

The entire post is very thoughtful and well worth reading, it’s also coming from a long-time Apple developer rather than some crank from an online magazine looking to stir up advertising hits. Panic’s software is wonderful: Transmit is an application that singlehandedly makes me want to use a Mac (yet it’s only, uh, an SFTP client). I think his post nicely sums up the way a lot of developers (including myself) feel about the App Store. He concludes:

I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies. And we don’t even have anything for sale on there yet.

Reading this also made me curious to learn more about Panic, which led me to this interview from 2004 with Frank and the other co-founder. He also has a number of side projects, including Spamusement, a roughly drawn cartoon depicting spam headlines (Get a bigger flute, for instance).

As a general tip, keep in mind that any data looks better as a wheel of Gouda.

You say “market share,” I say “wine pairing.”

(Via this article, passed along by a friend looking for ways to make pie charts with more visual depth.)

Wonderful commentary on being nannied by your mobile, and head-in-the-sand text prediction algorithms.

There’s lots more to be said about predictive text, but in the meantime, this also brings to mind Jonathan Harris’ QueryCount, which I found to be a more interesting followup to his WordCount project. (WordCount tells us something we already know, but QueryCount lets us see something we suspect.)

Wired’s Ryan Singel reports on a spat between AT&T and Google regarding their privacy practices:

Online advertising networks — particularly Google’s — are more dangerous than the fledgling plans and dreams of ISPs to install eavesdropping equipment inside their internet pipes to serve tailored ads to their customers, AT&T says.

Even more fun than watching gorillas fight (you don’t have to pick a side—it’s guaranteed to be entertaining) is when they bring up accusations that are usually reserved for the security and privacy set (or borderline paranoids who write blogs that cover  information and privacy). Or their argument boils down to “but we’re less naughty than you.” Ask any Mom about the effectiveness of that argument. AT&T writes:

Advertising-network operators such as Google have evolved beyond merely tracking consumer web surfing activity on sites for which they have a direct ad-serving relationship. They now have the ability to observe a user’s entire web browsing experience at a granular level, including all URLs visited, all searches, and actual page-views.

Deep Packet Inspection is an important sounding way to say that they’re just watching all your traffic. It’s quite literally the same as the post office opening all your letters and reading them, and in AT&T’s case, adding additional bulk mail (flyers, sweepstakes, and other junk) that seems appropriate to your interests based on what they find.

Are you excited yet?

This segment from CBS Sunday Morning isn’t particularly groundbreaking or profound (and perhaps a bit hokey), but is a helpful reminder on the importance of failure. (Nevermind the failure to post anything new for two weeks.)

Duke University professor Henry Petroski has made a career studying design failures, which he says are far more interesting than successes.

“Successes teach us very little,” Petroski said.

Petroski’s talking about bridges, but it holds true for any creative endeavor.

Also cited are J.K. Rowling bottoming out before her later success, van Gogh who sold just one painting before his death, Michael Jordan not making his high school basketball team, and others. (You’ve heard of these, but like I said, it’s about the reminder.)

It also notes that the important part is also how you handle failure, citing Chipper Jones, who leads baseball with a .369 batting average, which is impressive but also means that he’s only getting a hit one in three times he has a chance:

“Well, most of the time it’s not [going your way] and that’s why you have to be able to accept failure,” Jones said. “[…] a lot of work […] here in the big league is how you accept failure.”

Which is another important reminder: the standout difference in “making it” has to do with bouncing back from failure.

And if nothing else, watch it for footage of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. Such a beautiful (if terrifying) picture of cement and metal oscillating in the wind. Also linked from the Wikipedia article are a collection of still photographs (including the collapse) and links to newsreel footage from the Internet Archive.