“Happy ChucKing!”
What could this short phrase, uttered by Ge Wang, one of the authors of this excellent book, mean? My interpretation is “Happy ChucKing!” means exploring and composing sound in a playful way with ChucK, the programming language that is the basis of this book. But, “ChucKing” is more than that—it’s an approach to learning to code with a focus on the arts; it is both lively and profound.
Like many, I care about the visual arts and music more than anything else. I am interested in computers too, but primarily as tools to make images and noise. However, through the many times I failed to learn how to program computers from the ages of 10 to 25, I was forced to learn to code by making text—by printing “Hello World” to a screen or writing code to calculate numbers. To clarify, I like to write and I find math invaluable for what I love to do, but words and numbers are never the focus. They are always a means to an end.