Py5, a Python version of Processing for your creative coding projects

http://py5coding.org/index.html

by hx2a • 2 years ago

90 31 2 years ago

py5coding.org

p4bl0• 2 years ago

I don't get it, I thought this was a port of Processing to Python, but then the installation instruction says:

If you have Java 17 installed on your computer, you can install py5 using pip:

So it still depends on Java? Is this like a Python wrapper for Processing?

UPDATE: Got the explanation. From another page on the website:

Py5 is a creative coding framework for Python 3.9+. Its use and functionality is analogous to the widely used Processing framework. It is a Python version of Processing.
Internally py5 uses Processing’s core libraries, which are written in Java, while providing the end user with a (mostly) seamless Python programming experience.

Emphasis is mine. The wording in the first paragraph (which is the same as on the project's home page) seems ambiguous to me. Reading it I would really not expect a Java dependency.

animal_spirits3• 2 years ago

Yep. In case you don’t want to write Java you can do it in Python. But it uses the same engine

jszymborski• 2 years ago

I suppose jython would be particularly useful in such cases

kdlafan• 2 years ago

It seems like an axiom that no Python package can be written that does not depend on C/C++/Java doing the real work.

noitpmeder• 2 years ago

Why would you rewrite something that already exists? It'd be a different story if the library evolved naturally starting with python, which it very much might if it was created today.

nomel3• 2 years ago

Python is successful because everyone is aware that it has relatively terrible performance. As a result, anything remotely heavy is put into performant libraries that use not-python, leaving a nice glue language with fast libraries.

If you have something CPU bound, and it's python code hitting that ceiling, you're probably throwing away 10x performance [1]. That's ok, because anyone that cares about performance doesn't do that (or quickly learns).

[1] https://programming-language-benchmarks.vercel.app/cpp-vs-py...

rorytbyrne• 2 years ago

"X is a new version of Y" is a really uninformative way to introduce a project.

It's especially annoying when I click the link to Y and it just says "This repository contains the source code for Y".

gdevenyi• 2 years ago

It took way too many clicks for me to figure out what this project is. And I'm still not entirely sure.

dotancohen• 2 years ago

It's a Python wrapper for a popular Java tool.

snitty• 2 years ago

…which isn't a great explainer if you're not familiar with that Java tool.

Seems like it's an alternative to tk/tkinter.

bongodongobob4• 2 years ago

Is this any faster than Processing? I like playing with it for random art projects but always end up in optimization hell trying to speed things up.

senkora• 2 years ago

I would assume that drawing performance is slower because it’s doing FFI from CPython to the JVM, but that you may be able to get speedup if your bottleneck is something that can leverage numpy.

bongodongobob4• 2 years ago

Yeah, I think most times it isn't the drawing but the calculations I'm doing in the background, I'll have to try this out.

acbart• 2 years ago

Why must every educational python library insist on teaching kids with global variables? I know parameters aren't easy for novices, but it feels like it's missing a lot of the value when we don't attempt to teach them...

nnnnico• 2 years ago

True, but having a single scope is more intuitive at first for people who don't have a good grasp of what a function is and are still trying to understand programming. Also processing/p5 kind of focuses on the speed and accessibility of getting an idea going, for which a game-loop and a single func scope are quite powerful!

bongodongobob4• 2 years ago

Because it's perfectly fine for 100 line programs. Beginners don't need to write extensible code that will be maintained for 30 years on business critical systems. You start by learning what a fuckin for loop does.

nomel3• 2 years ago

Not only that, it's a relatively gentle introduction into object oriented concepts, where an instance is just like independent copies of modules, as they're using them: module.function(), with function accessing some global conceptually turns into instance.function() where function accesses some instance "global".

I was always a bit surprised that python didn't allow "module instances" that automatically did that.

bityard• 2 years ago

Because the concept of variables must be learned before the concept of scope.

Aerroon• 2 years ago

I can foresee the name of this causing issues in a decade or two when python releases version 5.

linsomniac• 2 years ago

I think everyone who has gone through the 2->3 transition will have to be dead before 3->4 will have a chance of even being considered. :-)

abathur• 2 years ago

Python 95 :)

skywhopper2• 2 years ago

I see the Processing folks have not lost their touch for unnecessarily confusing names. Why on earth would they call this “py5”?

animal_spirits3• 2 years ago

the javascript version of processing is called p5js. According to the creator the 5 comes from "the original domain of processing was proce55ing.net, so people used to sometimes refer to processing as proce55ing or P5 or p5 for short. they still do sometimes. p5.js is a reference to that."

https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/2443

skywhopper2• 2 years ago

Thanks for the answer, although it reinforces my point I think. I remember when Processing was the hot new thing and reading about it was incredibly confusing.

knighthack• 2 years ago

As someone who heavily uses Manim with Python, I like the idea. But I really don't want to use 'Py5' if it then has a Java dependency.

Py5, a Python version of Processing for your creative coding projects

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