Processing: Creative Coding and the Future of Education

Processing is one of the most widely used open-source tools for creative coding and computer science education. Since its first release in 2001, it has helped millions of students, artists, and designers learn programming through visual and interactive projects. It has been used in classrooms, art installations, interactive media, and data visualization worldwide. Processing popularized the term creative coding and helped establish it as a field that bridges art, design, and computer science.

The values that shaped Processing (accessibility, creativity, and democratization) remain essential, but the context has changed. Computer science education is dealing with rapid shifts in technology and society and today’s learners encounter a software ecosystem dominated by opaque but tantalizing systems and automation. This raises new questions: What does it mean to learn to code today? Can we re-imagine coding tools in a way that preserves learner agency, curiosity, and critical thinking? Could creative coding hold some of the answers?

In this talk, we’ll share what we’re learning as stewards of Processing and how these efforts invite us to rethink creative coding’s role in the future of computer science education.

More about Processing:

• A Modern Prometheus. The History of Processing by Casey Reas and Ben Fry
• Hello World! Processing - a documentary on creative coding
• Processing: the Software that Shaped Creative Coding
• The State of Processing: How We’re Bringing a Creative Coding Icon Back to Life - media.ccc.de