Processing Apps

The Language That Makes Art Think

Processing was created in 2001 by Casey Reas and Ben Fry at MIT’s Media Lab, originally as a teaching tool for artists and designers who wanted to learn programming without the intimidating syntax of professional software engineering. The core idea was radical for its time: what if writing code felt more like sketching? The two fundamental functions — setup() runs once at the start, draw() loops continuously — gave beginners an immediate feedback loop between code and canvas. You typed, the screen reacted. That direct connection is still what makes Processing the best entry point into visual computing.

What makes Processing remarkable is its multi-language personality. The original Processing runs on Java — it is, underneath, a Java library that hides the boilerplate. p5.js (our primary tool at TNT) brought the same philosophy to JavaScript and the browser in 2014, created by Lauren McCarthy. Processing.py extended the reach to Python programmers. The same creative concepts — the same setup()/draw() pattern, the same ellipse() and rect() calls — work across all three languages. Learn it in one, and you can read it in another. At TNT, we work primarily in p5.js for browser apps, and we’ve pushed that further with our own SketchWave ecosystem — custom classes that make shapes move, react, and take on a life of their own.