Design thinking may be considered as a set of important constructive processes and precepts used in the design and launch of products and solutions to human design problems. Coding art, now in its second edition, is published as part of the Apress “Design Thinking” series. The authors are Mathias Funk, a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and Yu Zhang, an artist by training. The book is proposed to be a guide to opening up your creativity by means of the Processing language and p5.js (a free and open-source JavaScript library).

Processing is an adaptable software sketchbook and language for finding out how to code. Students, artists, designers, researchers, and amateurs use Processing for learning and prototyping. Processing, which uses Java, is useful for electronic arts, new media art, and visual design, in addition to helping teach nonprogrammers the basics of computer programming using a visual context.

The first edition was published in 2021 [1]. This second edition incorporates the latest “trends in the field of creative programming.” It digs “deeper into the intricacies of computational art” and has “case studies that explore real-world applications of coding art.” It employs a four-step process and has 74 code examples. It focuses on practical examples and includes high-quality renderings and code. The example library is available online (https://github.com/codingart-book/examples). The book also has a helpful website (https://codingart-book.com).

This book follows four steps: the first step is about turning ideas into simple visuals; the second step shows how structure can help develop complex forms; the third step lets the computer add pieces of randomness and out of control bits; and the fourth step shows how to obtain superior results with Processing.

The first edition had ten chapters whereas the second edition has 11. New material on p5.js was added, commencing with a few aspirations on generative art.

The first edition of the book was well received. It contains nice examples with easy to understand code. Many readers felt that the authors had taken much effort in explaining how the code works so that they may write their own code and create their own images. The second edition will continue to be useful with new additions using p5.js. Although there are many books on the Processing language (which is 23 years old) and p5.js, nonetheless, this book is a practicable addition to coding art and will benefit its intended audience.