Reflection on Processing and Creative Computing

I am Noah Thoron, and at 14 years of age, I go to the San Diego Met High School. I am taking  a class here called Creative Computing, where I have learned a language called Processing. Processing was entirely new to me, but programing was not. I have worked in both C++ and Netlogo.

With Processing, I have created a few basic moving shapes. The one I am most proud of is a small moon. It moves across the screen, and waxes or wanes depending on the y coordinate of the mouse. To achieve this, I had it create four arcs: two half circles, and two quarter circles. One half was the base for the moon, the half that wood stay alight. The other was the piece that would preform half of the waning, creating the finger nail moon. The quarters were to create the full moon, as a half circle did not work. I tried to make twinkling stars in the back ground but they looked exceedingly ugly: scratched, old, faded. They darted randomly across the screen, leaving gashes in the retina.

I did not find working with Processing very difficult, probably because of my previous experience with other languages. I actually found it lacking for my purposes, in fact. I thought that Netlogo was better suited to my uses. It was better for creating simulations with interactions between different groups. With it, I have created a game heavily based on the Tron Light Bikes, and two simulations of evolution via natural selection and mutation. I hope to publish some of my work on the website for Netlogo.

I currently want to go to a prestigious science and technology school, and get a career with robotics or artificial intelligence.

Taking this class has been a good experience, and I enjoyed taking it, but I don’t know how much I will use what I learned.