Acknowledgements
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."
– John of Salisbury, 1159Where to even begin with these acknowledgements. Firstly, I want to thank Daniel Shiffman and his team who developed Processing and the original Nature of Code book and website. This website would not exist without their implicit generosity in making both the book and source code open source. When I first discovered the material, I was enamored. I yearned to connect it to my work in immersive media. The algorithms, the explanations, and the math were a godsend to someone like me—an artist and scholar first, programmer second, or to be honest, third. With the help of Shiffman’s explanations of natural phenomena I was able to envision a translation of the material into C# for use in Unity.
This turned out to be a much larger undertaking than I expected. The project began in December 2019 when the world seemed to be spinning appropriately on its axis. Now, as December 2020 approaches, the world is a very different place. Yet, even as the pandemic raged alongside wildfires, civil, and political strife—the project persisted. This was due entirely to the enthusiasm of a few of my programming students at Columbia College Chicago. They are all named on the front page, but I would be remiss if I did not thank Jethro Schoppenhurst, Owen Ravelo, Thomas Rohn, and Christopher Grych for their incredible work. From the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, these students worked and collaborated with one another to check and double-check code, revise logic, and discuss implementations. In many ways, they were my teachers and we all can benefit from their great work. If I may be a proud professor, if you are an employer and see their names come across your desk—hire them.This site is still a work in progress, and it is my expectation that it will be a living document. As the project rolls out, I will be making edits, soliciting suggestions, and cleaning up the site. As of writing, I am still waiting for the SSL-certificate to register. It is probably best not to count one’s chickens before they hatch, but I am a big believer in iteration, revision, and collaboration. The code, which can be found on Github, is freely available for all to use. It will continually be updated and I am always open to suggestions. Edits that are made on the Github repo will automatically appear on this website. You can expect to always see the latest updates along with WebGL demos.
Please report any issues with the book or code on GitHub.
Again, I am beyond indebted to the original author, Daniel Shiffman and his team. Without their work, none of this would be possible. It is my hope that you, reader, will take the code we have attempted to translate and implement it in compelling projects in Unity. Best of luck to you in this endeavor.
Licenses
The book's text and illustrations are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
All of the book's source code is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Remixer
Joshua A. Fisher is an Assistant Professor of the Center for Emerging Media Design and Development at Ball State University.
His portfolio can be found here
Author
Daniel Shiffman is a Professor of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.
He is the author of Learning Processing.