Learning how to code can be challenging. It is hard to find good resources that are relevant, practical and engaging at the same time. This course teaches coding from scratch using the vastly popular programming language JavaScript.
Why this Course?
At this age and time that we live in, coding is simply invaluable. It has the power to uplift your career, your future prospects and even your intellectual capacity. Computation is driving one of the largest capital expansions in history and there has never been a better time to learn coding than now.
Computation is driving one of the largest capital expansions in history and there has never been a better time to learn coding than now.
In this course you will learn how to code in a highly engaging and visual manner using JavaScript and a programming library called p5.js.
The emphasis of the course will be primarily on learning programming using JavaScript and p5.js and secondarily in creating visuals. The main focus is to teach you how to program so that you can choose to pursue whatever field that you would like with your newly established skill set. The skills that you will acquire from this course are highly transferrable and could be used whatever you choose to build; whether web applications, programmable robots or generative art.
This means that I will provide you with enough context so that you can build a strong foundation for programming. But I also won’t hinder our momentum with irrelevant technical or theoretical points. The aim is to build a strong but a minimum viable knowledge to get you running with coding. This is the course that I wished I had available when I was learning coding myself.
The aim is to build a strong but a minimum viable knowledge using engaging and visual examples to get you running with coding.
Who is this course for?
If you are an artist or a visual designer this course is perfect for you as you might find the examples we will be building to be directly relevant to your work. If not, this is still a great course for learning programming as the visual nature of the exercises will help you grasp the fundamentals of programming easier and let you build a strong foundation in a shorter amount of time.
What is p5.js?
p5.js is a creative coding library that is based on the idea of sketching. Just like how sketching can be thought of as a minimal approach to drawing to quickly prototype an idea, p5.js is built on the concept of writing the minimal amount of code to translate your visual, interaction or animation ideas to the screen. p5.js is a JavaScript implementation of the popular library called Processing which is based on the Java programming language. More info on p5.js can be found on their website.
The concise nature of p5.js makes it a very easy library to learn. But don’t let this simplicity trick you into believing that p5.js has limited capabilities. p5.js has an impressive amount of functionality, history and community behind it to make it a valuable learning investment if you ever wanted to create art, design, motion or interactive pieces using code. A p5.js program can be anywhere from a few lines of code to thousands.
You can use p5.js for practical applications such as creating data visualizations or building generative computational art pieces. At the end of this course we will be building an interactive game using p5.js! See the examples page for some of the projects.
If you are an artist or a visual designer this course is perfect for you as you might find the examples we will be building to be directly relevant to your work. If not, this is still a great course for learning programming as the visual nature of the exercises will help you grasp the fundamentals of programming easier and let you build a strong foundation in a shorter amount of time.
Why JavaScript?
There are many programming languages out there. This course will be teaching you how to code, by using the immensely popular programming language, JavaScript.
JavaScript is one of the most widely used programming languages out there as it is built into every web browser. Due to this, almost all the web pages and applications out there uses JavaScript to some degree. In recent years JavaScript started to be used not only to program user interaction in web pages but also server side - backend - applications, Internet of Things (IOT) devices or mobile apps for platforms such as Android or iPhone. Even though it has its roots in web development, JavaScript knowledge is now applicable to a vast number of other domains. JavaScript is a great language because: