(1) Where to start....

I grew up first without computers at all, but at age ~11 or so, I got a Commodore 20 (VIC-20). Such a (simple) computer came with an instruction book and power supply. I did not initially get an games or any other software. So the "only" fun one had was to turn it on and try to enter some BASIC programs and learn to program.

Today, one is presented with a very different initial exposure to computers. Once I had kids myself, I wondered how they could be introduced to the fun of programming, without having a large initial step to take. Scratch of course is an easy and quite fun way to go, but when trying this with my kids and doing some programs myself, I found it sometimes hard and cumbersome to express programs graphically.

My older son got introduced in school recently to a new attempt to tech programming. The course/program is called You++. In the background it is using processing as the language. When I looked at what he was doing, I tried it myself and then I downloaded the stand-alone processing package. Now, that seemed both fun and easy to start with.

This blog is an attempt to show you how to start with processing, from scratch, and focus on the "fun" of it, with not a huge focus on knowing exactly on every detail of the language and functions it has and I use. Hope it is helpful to someone.

The video below is going to be an example that will be explained later. But it will be later. A few things needs to be explained first. Enjoy (hopefully)!