Processing Alternatives

processing reviews and mentions

• Generative Art over the Years
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Apr 2026

  Reading this makes me want to fire up Processing [1] again. I remember spending hours and days with it in my early twenties. The immediacy of writing a few simple commands, hitting "Run" and seeing graphical output is still unsurpassed and created an almost addictive creative feedback loop that I haven't seen anywhere else yet.

  [1] https://processing.org

• I got paid minimum wage to solve an impossible problem.
  1 project | dev.to | 13 Jan 2026

  I built a visual editor in Processing (a Java tool for people who like making things look cool), so I could easily map out the store and export the resulting graph.

• DevLog 20250611: Audio API Design for Divooka Glaze!
  1 project | dev.to | 11 Jun 2025

  Glaze! is an interactive media framework in Divooka that features a Processing-like interface.

• What is a modern successor to HyperCard?
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jun 2025

  I have been following HyperCard clones for years. It would take me some time to gather what I found, but the short answer is to download a Mac OS 9 emulator (it works) and load up HyperCard 2.4.1 and have fun.

  Emulators page with links to versions for MacOS and Windows.

  https://mendelson.org/emulators.html

  Hypercard 2.4.1 is available at the Macintosh Repository

  https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2632-hypercard-2-4

  I had bought it long and used it in my work to make simulations with graphical output (via XCMDS) and to output EPS files for tech pubs. I think that the in-house use of HyperCard was vastly under-reported.

  I'll update in a reply if and when I find the best standalone HC clones in my search.

  Naturally, the full-blown emulator and HC are not for kids, unless you install it for your kids. I let my daughter have some fun with the original HyperCard, and I keep a MacCube with MacOS9 for sentimental reasons, though it's boxed right now.

  Sightly off-topic, Processing offers highly graphical coding.

  https://processing.org/

  And gcompris offers lots of educational apps that one might have written in HyperCard.

  https://www.gcompris.net/index-en.html

• Processing Foundation is hiring a Processing Project Lead!
  3 projects | dev.to | 1 May 2025

  You can learn more about the Processing software and community at processing.org, or visit the Processing4 repository, Processing website repository, and our roadmap.

• Cloth
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Apr 2025

  >web dev/gradle/java knowledge to build something like this

  Web dev (and not just in java) is dominated by "component integration" concerns, containing lots of structure but little content. Computation is delegated to libraries, and the problems more about complexity of integration (at build time) scaled distributed systems (at runtime). In contrast, writing a simulation is computationally intensive, so most of the code is content. It's homogenous where web dev is heterogenous. The problems are entirely constrained by single process performance within a time budget determined by fps.

  All that means is that you can focus on one runtime. I suggest the browser, since it solves the distribution problem. Ganja[1] is perhaps the ultimate "content, not structure" simulation project. It's very strange, and lies unmaintained because it's impenetrable. Yet it works. A bit more structured is D3 who's authors have written cutting edge visulation/layout algorithms for you, for example in support of force directed graphs[2]. A more friendly way to get started would be with some variant of Processing[3], which started as a Java thing and then got ported around, including to Python and JavaScript. A word of warning: something like cloth simulation is to a game engine what a single cell is to a mouse. Game engines are huge, in other words, and again you won't be writing simulations, lots of (internal) integrations.

  1 - https://github.com/enkimute/ganja.js/blob/master/ganja.js

  2 - https://github.com/d3/d3-force/tree/main/src

  3 - https://processing.org/

• Relax while watching bouncing particles making connections when they get closer
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Jan 2025
• Cosy Computing
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Sep 2024

  This is a nice comment and speaks to the notion that every medium has its own characteristic feel even is not "better" by some metric (e.g. vinyl vs CDs, vs cassettes, vs live radio, vs mp3, etc.).

  A similar feeling of immediacy without any intervening concerns is hacking away at a Processing [https://processing.org/] sketch. In some sense it's the complete opposite of retro computing, but it engenders similar experiences. Such as a programming novice typing in a few numbers and being amazed that they've immediately made something interactive and colorful, and temptingly close to being called a game.

• Want to be a software engineer? The difficulty of top down learning.
  1 project | dev.to | 5 Aug 2024

  In high school the first languages and tools I remember using were things like Turing, Processing, GreenFoot and BlueJ. All of which were learning tools, and with the exception of Turing, were Java abstractions with the main focus on graphical programming. These tools allowed me to do some pretty cool things, very quickly. These early experience are really what inspired my interest.

• p5.js
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Aug 2024

  Some more context: Ben Fry posted a thread on X in 10/2023[1] where he announced and explained his decision to resign from the Processing Foundation.

  Seems like Processing got left out from expenses despite their large budget, running against their original reason to start the foundation: “I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead. You know what that sounds like? The reason we started a Foundation in the first place. Two people is not enough for any of the Processing software projects (i.e. anything that lives at a http://processing.org domain.)”

  I wonder if most of the money went into p5 or the new website or whatever, but it made me a bit sad to see that the original Processing got left behind. It is what got me into programming and there are still lots of good reasons to choose it over p5. I can, however, understand if they prioritised p5 due to the rise of web apps and mobile devices, sharability, JS being everywhere and so on. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but it just doesn’t bring me as much joy as the original.

  [1]: https://x.com/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020

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