Some friendly advice: ignore random opinions you read on the internet.
Many things about coding are subjective. There is no “good” or “bad” language. It all comes down to your personal preferences, your goals, and your context.
I want to learn Processing. I just fell in love with it…
This is enough. If you enjoy it, then who cares what people on the internet say?
Think about it this way: you could have chosen any language, any framework, any library, and you’d still be able to find people criticizing your choice if you looked for them. You can’t put too much weight into that.
Processing is not good for game dev
Granted Processing is not a game development framework, but that’s because it’s more generalized. You can create games in Processing, but you can also create many other things. Recluse is my favorite Processing game. I’ve personally created quite a few games in Processing and p5.js.
If you’re trying to create the next Call of Duty, then sure, Processing is probably not the right choice. But if you’re looking to experiment and be creative, then Processing is perfect.
Processing is not good for big projects
Processing is good just for simple small programs
The gallery is a good example of the kinds of things you can do with Processing. The exhibition is another. Many artists use Processing to create their work- Aaron Koblin is one of my go-to examples.
But again, I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The question shouldn’t be “is Processing good for big projects?” - the question is “is Processing good for my project?”
And only you can answer that question.
Processing is Java so it’s really slow, use X
It’s easy to speak in generalities, but it’s almost never actually useful. Saying “Java is slow” is at best incomplete, because it leaves out all of the important information: What are you actually trying to do? How “fast” does it need to be? What are the actual measurements of doing that in different languages?
Have you reached a point in your project where you need something faster? If not, then don’t worry about it. (And if so, there are many things you can do before you think about switching languages.)
If you do want to give me a piece of advice please do ! I feel like I want to continue learning Processing but I am afraid of becoming someone that would think that it wasn’t a good decision.
People love to debate which language is “best”, but in the end, languages are tools. If you want to be a good carpenter, you don’t only learn how to use a saw. You learn how to use a saw, a hammer, a screwdriver, a wrench, whatever. And learning how to use one tool is not wasted time- in fact, learning one tool often makes it easier to learn more tools in the future.
The same is true of programming languages. And that’s one of my favorite things about Processing and p5.js: they are perfect languages for learning the fundamentals, because you start out right away coding interesting things, without any setup, installation, or boilerplate code.
And then if you want to learn other languages eventually, you can apply all of the knowledge you learned with Processing.
But chances are, Processing is going to be “enough” for a long while.
Good luck!