I will just paste here Reas’ and Fry’s announcement of Processing 1.0, finally the official release of the best open source IDE to learn about programming.

Congratulations Processing! Visit their website here

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Today, on November 24, 2008, we launch the 1.0 version of the Processing
software. Processing is a programming language, development environment,
and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy
within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software
sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a
visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating
finished professional work as well.

Processing is a free, open source alternative to proprietary software
tools with expensive licenses, making it accessible to schools and
individual students.

[…]

Students at hundreds of schools around the world use Processing for
classes ranging from middle school math education to undergraduate
programming courses to graduate fine arts studios.

[…]

Tens of thousands of companies, artists, designers, architects, and
researchers use Processing to create an incredibly diverse range of
projects.

[…]

Processing was founded by Ben Fry and Casey Reas in 2001 while both were
John Maeda’s students at the MIT Media Lab. […]

Download images and more text about Processing:
www.processing.org/about/processing-1.0.zip