Event

Fun and Games with a New Programming Language

July 12- 26, Thursdays, 5-9PM (three sessions)

Workshop Description: Zajal is a new programming language developed by Eyebeam Fellow Ramsey Nasser. It is designed to be a lot of fun, and emphasizes improvisation and experimentation over rigid rules. Each of these three workshops will introduce the language in a different way: through game design, data visualization, and physical computing.

Game design calls for the ability to rapidly change rules of a game while developing it. Zajal's combination of graphics capabilities and live coding makes it ideal for game prototyping. The first workshop will focus on gathering input, maintaining game state, and displaying graphics to make a complete video game.

In addition to graphics, Zajal has a suite of tools to talk to online datasets, which makes it a powerful tool for rapidly developing data visualizations. In the second workshop, we will explore accessing the internet, as well as reading JSON and XML data.

One of the language's most exciting features is it's ability to control any connected Arduino live. The final workshop will focus on prototyping hardware behavior in Zajal by controlling LEDs, motors, and speakers.

Prerequisites:

Macintosh laptop running Mac OS 10.6 or higher.
Physical Computing attendees will need an Arduino UNO board and any components they want to drive.
Workshop Instructor: Ramsey Nasser is a conceptual computer scientist and a Fellow at Eyebeam, where he is investigating programming languages as mediums of self expression. His inquiry involves a number of different languages, but Zajal remains his primary project.

Sessions:

July 12: Gaming

July 19: Data Visualization

July 26: Physical Computing/Robotics

Cost: $75 per session