I would like to spotlight several students who worked as graduate associates on the Nature of Code materials. Through their work with the ITP/IMA Equitable Syllabus project, Chaski No and Briana Jones provided extraordinary research support that expanded the book’s concepts and references. As the graduate assistant for the inaugural undergraduate version of the Nature of Code class, Gracy Whelihan offered invaluable support and feedback, and always reminded me of the wonder of random numbers.
Jason Gao and Stuti Mohgaonkar worked on the build systems for the book materials, inventing new workflows for writing and editing. Elias Jarzombek also warrants a mention for his advice and technical support, stemming from the Code of Music book project.
After graduating, Jason Gao continued to develop the Nature of Code website. If you head there now, you will see the fruits of his many talents: a full version of the book that seamlessly integrates with the p5.js web editor. It’s a realization far beyond my initial vision.
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The interior of the book along with the website was meticulously designed by Tuan Huang. Tuan began developing layout ideas while taking the Nature of Code class in the spring of 2023. After graduating, Tuan further refined the design, working to develop a consistent visual language across the many elements of the book. Her minimal and elegant aesthetics greatly enhanced the book’s visual appeal and accessibility. A special thanks also to the OpenMoji project—the open source emoji and icon project (Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0)—for providing a delightful and comprehensive set of emojis used throughout this book for various elements.
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The interior of the book along with the website was meticulously designed by Tuan Huang. Tuan began developing layout ideas while taking the Nature of Code class in the spring of 2023. After graduating, Tuan further refined the design, working to develop a consistent visual language across the many elements of the book. Her minimal and elegant aesthetics greatly enhanced the book’s visual appeal and accessibility. A special thanks also to the OpenMoji project—the open source emoji and icon project (Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0)—for providing a delightful and comprehensive set of emojis used throughout this book for various elements.
I’m also indebted to the energetic and supportive creative coding community and the Processing Foundation. I wouldn’t be writing this book if it weren’t for Casey Reas and Ben Fry, who created Processing in 2001 and co-founded the Processing Foundation. They’ve dedicated over 20 years to building and maintaining the software and its community. I’ve learned half of what I know simply from reading through the Processing source code and documentation; the elegant simplicity of the Processing language, website, and IDE is the original source of inspiration for all my teaching and work.
Lauren Lee McCarthy, the creator of p5.js, planted the seed that made everything possible for transforming the book into JavaScript. She’s a tireless champion for inclusion and access in open source, and her approach to community building has been profoundly inspiring to me. Cassie Tarakajian invented the p5.js web editor, a heroic undertaking that has made it possible to collect and organize all the example code in the book.
My heartfelt thanks extends to the other current and former members (along with Casey, Ben, and Lauren) of the Processing board of directors: Dorothy Santos, Kate Hollenbach, Xin Xin, and Johanna Hedva. A special acknowledgment to the project leads, staff, and alumni of the foundation, who have each played a pivotal role in shaping and propelling the community and its projects: Andres Colubri, Charles Reinhardt, evelyn masso, Jesse C Thompson, Jonathan Feinberg, Moira Turner, Qianqian Ye, Rachel Lim, Raphaël de Courville, Saber Khan, Suhyun (Sonia) Choi, Toni Pizza, Tsige Tafesse, and Xiaowei R. Wang.
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- Photo from A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, RAND Corporation, MR-1418-RC, 2001. As of October 17, 2023: https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html
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+ Photo from A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, RAND Corporation, MR-1418-RC, 2001.
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, RAND Corporation
In 1947, the RAND Corporation produced a peculiar book titled A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. The book wasn’t a work of literature or a philosophical treatise on randomness. Rather, it was a table of random numbers generated using an electronic simulation of a roulette wheel. This book was one of the last in a series of random-number tables produced from the mid-1920s to the 1950s. With the development of high-speed computers, generating pseudorandom numbers became faster than reading them from tables, and so this era of printed random-number tables ultimately came to an end.
Example 2.8 could be improved by refactoring the code to include constructor arguments that assign the body velocities. For now, however, this approach serves as a quick way to experiment with patterns based on various initial positions and velocities.
Exercise 2.14
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The paper “Classification of Symmetry Groups for Planar n-Body Choreographies” by James Montaldi and Katrina Steckles (2013) explores choreographic solutions to the n-body problem (defined as periodic motions of bodies following one another at regular intervals). Educator and artist Dan Gries created an interactive demonstration of these choreographies. Try adding a third (or more!) body to Example 2.8 and experiment with setting initial positions and velocities. What choreographies can you achieve?
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The paper “Classification of Symmetry Groups for Planar n-Body Choreographies” by James Montaldi and Katrina Steckles (2013) explores choreographic solutions to the n-body problem (defined as periodic motions of bodies following one another at regular intervals). Educator and artist Dan Gries created an interactive demonstration of these choreographies. Try adding a third (or more!) body to Example 2.8 and experiment with setting initial positions and velocities. What choreographies can you achieve?
I’m now ready to move on to an example with n bodies by incorporating an array:
// Start with an empty array.
diff --git a/content/06_libraries.html b/content/06_libraries.html
index 4999a730..db6ea9f9 100644
--- a/content/06_libraries.html
+++ b/content/06_libraries.html
@@ -485,7 +485,7 @@
Exercise 6.2
Start with the code for Example 6.2 and, using the methodology outlined in this chapter, add the code to implement Matter.js physics. Delete bodies that have left the canvas. The result should appear as in this image. Feel free to be creative in the way you draw the boxes!
- Drag the mouse to add boxes.
+ Dragging the mouse adds new boxes.
The seminal work in L-systems and plant structures, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants by Przemysław Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer (Springer), was published in 1990. Chapter 1 describes many sophisticated L-systems with additional drawing rules and available alphabet characters. It also describes several methods for generating stochastic L-systems. Expand the L-system code in Example 8.9 to include one or more of the extra features described by Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer.
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The seminal work in L-systems and plant structures, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants by Przemysław Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer (Springer), was published in 1990. Chapter 1 describes many sophisticated L-systems with additional drawing rules and available alphabet characters. It also describes several methods for generating stochastic L-systems. Expand the L-system code in Example 8.9 to include one or more of the extra features described by Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer.
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