The origins of Processing at the MIT Media Lab go back to the Visible Language Workshop (VLW). Founded in 1975, the VLW became a founding research group at the lab from 1985 until 1994, when the director Muriel Cooper passed away. Processing emerged directly from the Aesthetics + Computation Group (ACG), a research unit set up at the Media Lab by John Maeda in 1996. Maeda’s work at the lab continued to synthesise visual design exploration with emerging software technologies. Within the ACG, Maeda initiated the Design By Numbers (DBN) programming platform, which was released in 1999.

Following this first appearance, he brought the two of us into the project to help maintain and extend it. Many aspects of Processing were modelled after DBN, which also integrated a code editor with a language. DBN was a minimal system: the canvas was always 100 by 100 pixels and only grey values could be used – there was no colour. These constraints, as well as comfortable code elements such as paper and pen, made DBN easy to learn. Our experience with DBN kindled the ambition to begin Processing. We started by extending DBN to include colour and other features, but we soon realised that these limitations were the essence of that platform and it shouldn’t be expanded. Our aim was to devise a system that was as easy to use as DBN, but with a bridge to making more ambitious work. We wanted to allow people to work in colour, at large sizes, to create 3D graphics, and more. Simple Processing sketches are almost as straightforward as DBN sketches, but Processing scales up – it has a “low floor” and a “high ceiling”.