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.
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"?
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
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.
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.
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"?
Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional.
Wikipedia
I kinda figured this out from context clues, but they really should introduce the term on this page!
Anyone know what "expressive" means here?
Also, you could have provided a link to the wikipedia article this is from.
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Back in 80/90 we used to call it "demoscene".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding
It's a well established term.
Its written extensively with ai. I got excited to read but got turned away when i saw the disclaimer.
How sad. "Creative coding" was supposed to be one of the last respites we programmers had from the sloppotron.
Have you looked at other forms of art like images, videos, and music? AI workflows have been incorporated into make such art too.
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That’s disappointing. I’ll give that a miss then.
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
3 replies →
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.
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Did any other old timer like me get reminded of Creative Computing magazine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Computing_(magazine)
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!
Thank you :)
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