HELLO

http://processing.org/reference/compare/index.html

Apart from what it says on the page above, you get out what you put in. And there's a nice community of putter-ins here.

In my opinion, the reason Processing is great is that it really simplifies writing graphical Java applets.  If you've ever fought with Java trying to get a constant frame rate double buffered applet running without nasty pauses and glitches, you'll appreciate all the behind the scenes stuff that Processing automatically does for you when you type size(640,480,P3D); frameRate(30);.  I remember the first time I tried to write a graphical Java applet, I discovered that it would only run smoothly if I added in an empty statement to the run loop.  To this day I still don't know why, and frankly, I don't care, because there's no point in fighting with garbage like that when in Processing you can just focus on your actual application logic instead of tricking the applet into behaving as you think it should.

Another thing that hooked me is the fact that the P3D renderer allows you to easily render 3D stuff in software, so you can publish 3D web applets without going through the trouble to design your own renderer - even if you do go through that trouble, P3D already has lighting and a pretty complex transformation system that's better than anything you're likely to implement on your own.  And now you can even (as long as you're willing to accept a signed applet) publish OpenGL stuff without any difficulty.

So basically, if you're interested in graphical stuff and doing it simply (i.e. without dealing with lower level graphical BS), Processing is for you.  Something that would take ~500 lines of code in pure Java is often a mere 80 line sketch in Processing (and if you're using 3D, the gains are even more significant).  If you're interested in UI stuff, it's probably not your thing, since things like buttons and text fields are a little trickier, and you need to do most of that yourself.  And if worst comes to worst, you can always label a file ".java" and use pure Java code (though Swing doesn't play well with Processing), so you really lose nothing by using it.

Just try doing the bitmap operations that Processing can do in an .swf and you'll see a hell of a difference chum.

For example, you cannot do this in swf. It justs slows down to one frame every 5 seconds.

Not to mention that swf is not allowed full access to the computer, cannot save files without being wrapped, you only have about 32mb of memory, no abstract classes or overloading methods and no hardware acceleration.

(That said I'm coding Flash for a living at the moment )

kngpengwin wrote on May 29^th, 2007, 3:35pm:


Yeah, you summed it up nicely there kngpengwin

I also used to experiment and have fun with actionscript but completely dropped it when I discovered Processing. In Flash the speed, versatility and extensibility leave much to be desired for.

There is however a large crossover between the capabilities of Processing and Flash Actionscript. Bitmap operations, video, drawing API, etc. (I'm simplifying hugely here).

And let's not forget that in Processing I can actually save my cool computational-design work to frames, pdf etc. Hadn't had much luck with Actionscript in the past. (Screen grabbing)

Processing - Lean and mean computational-design machine.

Nice read:
http://www.abstractmachine.net/blog/flash-in-the-pan/