Languages

I thought it would be a good idea to look at languages that have been noted as a good choice to work with the Arduino on computers.

Max/MSP

A Max/MSP "Patch"
dhardy.co.uk

Max/MSP is a visial object orientated programming interface that is highly extensible and well documented. Max/MSP uses pre-programmed patches and parameters to form "patches". These patches can scale to any size and can include other patches.

"Max/MSP/Jitter is three things:

• Max, a graphical programming environment that provides user interface, timing, communications, and MIDI support
• MSP, for real-time audio synthesis and DSP
• Jitter, for video and matrix data processing"

- Cycling 74's website

I have had some experience with using the Arduino technology with Max/MSP coding and serial input, and the impression I got was that the possibilities are vast and the time-span of achieving ideas can be quite short given the extensive documentation on the function of Max/MSP.

Processing

Cover of a book on Processing
soup-du-jour.net

Processing is an open source programming language that is built on the successful language of Java. It is a language designed by visual artists to encourage visuals in computer programming.

"It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

Processing is free to download and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows."

- processing.org

The website describes Processing as a language that is meant to be available to everyone, on any platform, for free, which are hard aspects to find among expensive licensed software usually associated with artists.