Learning Creative Coding
Comments
akst
dolebirchwood
Am I just supposed to know what "creative coding" is? It is not defined anywhere on the page. What specifically distinguishes "creative coding" from just "coding"?
oceansky
Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional.
Wikipedia
sanderjd
I kinda figured this out from context clues, but they really should introduce the term on this page!
zabzonk
Anyone know what "expressive" means here?
Also, you could have provided a link to the wikipedia article this is from.
empressplay
Art. Creative coding is creating art, be that visual art or music.
Isamu
Art is always left undefined. This is a feature, not a bug.
mfabbri77
Back in 80/90 we used to call it "demoscene".
user____name
It's a well established term.
marysminefnuf
Its written extensively with ai. I got excited to read but got turned away when i saw the disclaimer.
bitwize
How sad. "Creative coding" was supposed to be one of the last respites we programmers had from the sloppotron.
charcircuit
Have you looked at other forms of art like images, videos, and music? AI workflows have been incorporated into make such art too.
bluefirebrand
As soon as AI touches it, it's not art anymore
It's just content at that point
bitwize
I've found that AI "art" makes human-created art—even if bad—look more refreshing.
slopinthebag
And I will continue to reject all forms of AI generated art. I have zero patience for slop, on both practical and ideological grounds.
makerofthings
That’s disappointing. I’ll give that a miss then.
rain-princess
if you open up the pdf it actually says written with AI...and author's 2 decades of experience with creative coding. i feel like it's a pretty fair disclaimer
rogerrogerr
If someone gave me an ice cream cone and said "this is 99% ice cream and 1% cow shit", that would be a fair disclaimer. I still wouldn't lick it.
kiba
I used AI to do a lot of stress testing and to see what patterns fall out of the setting rule I wrote. Helped a lot with grammar checking and general editing. Brainstorming too.
When you write enough materials, the AI generated output started becoming less generic and actually interesting. Really cool. Still wouldn't use the generated output. The ideas, yes, but not the words.
I write every single word. It's not a shortcut by any means. Just means that your work can be narratively and technically more rigorous. Using AI to generate stories for you defeat the purpose.
If it didn't take you at least an hour to create something worthwhile, it's likely that you generated slop.
slopinthebag
Good for you. However I will be avoiding the consumption of your work on those grounds.
guiambros
In the author's defense, I just read a chapter, and it doesn't feel like AI slop. I think they were just being brutally transparent with disclaimers. The author has "two decades of experience teaching creative coding".
Also the book is beautifully designed. Clearly a lot of effort and taste was put into it (as you'd expect from a Creative Coding book).
I'm not the target audience, but if this work was only possible because of AI, I'd say this is a win for the world.
Full disclaimer from the pdf:
> AI ASSISTANCE
> This book was created through an extended collaboration between the author, Claude (Anthropic), and ChatGPT (OpenAI). The structure, pedagogical framework, and frustrations catalog emerged from the author’s two decades of teaching creative coding. AI served as writing partner, generating draft content based on detailed prompts while the author provided direction, critique, iteration, and editorial control. AI was also used to generate specific images. All teaching insights, personal anecdotes, and educational philosophy originate from the author’s experience.
bobanrocky
Another one trying to make some hay .. oh well
JoeDaDude
Did any other old timer like me get reminded of Creative Computing magazine?
jonjacky
Another book that might have some similarities, apparently from 2020:
https://aesthetic-programming.net/ Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31726334 (2022) but only one comment -- mine!
SilentM68
Thank you :)
matthewdipo
[dead]
I opened the book, it looks kind of like an essay. But it says this at the start
> This book was created through an extended collaboration between the author, Claude (Anthropic), and ChatGPT (OpenAI). The structure, pedagogical framework, and frustrations catalog emerged from the author’s two decades of teaching creative coding.
I think it would have been better to make a series of blog posts and held off on writing the book until they felt comfortable doing it without AI and understood how to express this ideas without AI.
Before I saw the AI comment, I felt like giving that to someone looking to learn about this might be overwhelming tbh. Now I feel it would be incredibly harmful like telling the blind to follow the blind. A beginner would be better off just to being told to give whatever they want to do a go and use claude as needed or something if they don't understand it. I did wonder why there was no code, I figure maybe they want to keep it general and keep this more philosophical.
tbh I dig the aesthetic of the book, but idk seeing that in the intro just makes it feel like it isn't worth my time.