Hello and happy 2020!
It is me, Dan, from the Coding Train
here to launch a new learning playlist on YouTube
called The Nature of Code.
That's what it says right here.
So this is not new content at all.
In fact, this playlist that I'm about to embark upon
is based on material that I started
working on probably in 2008 and then published a book about,
which you can find online at natureofcode.com in 2012.
The book here that you're seeing was written then
and has largely not been updated.
It uses processing, which is a Java-based creative coding
environment.
And I am in the process of rewriting the book
to update things for 2020 as well as port a lot
all of the text and examples to JavaScript with p5.js.
So it's my dream that by the time you're watching this,
this will look totally different.
But this is where it is right now as I'm recording this.
In terms of what's already on the YouTube channel,
these are all of the videos.
Most of these were actually recorded between five and eight
years ago.
The quality is a little bit lower--
not that my quality is the best ever now but it's improved.
And so you can go back and watch these.
But largely, what I'm going to do
is go through a lot of these topics
and redo these videos with new ways of thinking
and new ideas, and also JavaScript.
I should mention that some of the stuff I did
update more recently like genetic algorithms,
and neural networks, and the physics library,
and little bits and pieces in here--
so if you're following through this playlist,
there will be some forward and backward in
time of when things have been recorded.
But hopefully, it will all piece together with a nice narrative.
If you want to follow the book being updated
and the examples being updated as it's happening,
I'll refer you to the Nature of Code on GitHub.
So here are all of the open source
repositories for all of the raw material of the book.
So the book itself is in NOC book two.
There's the syllabus, which is for a course
that I'm teaching at ITP, New York University, School
of the Arts.
There's the code for the website.
There's the processing examples.
There's the p5.js examples.
And there's even some Python examples as well.
And so all of this is stuff that I'm going to be working on.
And my goal is that sometime, by the end of 2020, all of this
will be complete.
This video series that is there in front of you
will have be all filled out and we can all just
have a little dance and be merry, go merrily on our way.
And let me also give a mention of Kadenze
which I participated in producing an online course
called the Nature of Code a bunch of years
ago as well that has a lot of video
tutorials, a lot of similar content.
This is also a nice resource, a complement
to what I'm doing here as well.
So I probably should have mentioned
what this is all about.
So this book is about looking at the world around us,
the natural world, being inspired by it
and trying to create software experiences,
interactive experiences inspired and based on those things.
The first bit of advice I might have for you-- and thinking
of the words of George Washington Carver,
go take a walk outside.
Experience the world around you.
Be with people.
Be with human beings.
Enjoy nature.
And that might help really give you ideas and inspiration
for what you might want to create
when you sit down to code.
And that's really what this book is about for me--
fractals, cellular automata, autonomous agents,
physics simulation, genetic algorithms, neural networks.
This happens to be a list of things
that I'm going to go through step by step by step
throughout this series.
But really, there's so much more to the world
that we live in than just that, into outer space
and beyond into the universe.
So I hope that as you watch this series,
you think beyond just what I have here.
Create stuff and also share it with me.
So stay tuned.
Look in this video's description.
There's lots of ways if you're watching these videos that you
can share projects you've made, mostly on TheCodingTrain.com
where I think I'm going to put stuff.
But just check the video's description.
All that will be ironed out.
I've got to end this because this is really
just a rambling introduction.
I want to get into the content.
I'm going to come back and redo this anyway
once all the videos are done.
So hopefully, now you're watching this
sometime in the future as like an interesting historical
footnote.
But thanks.
Come with me on this journey into the nature of code
and I hope you enjoy it.
I'm going to enjoy making it, I know because I
do enjoy this kind of stuff.
And I can't wait to see what you do.
Bye!
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