I just deployed Processing to a class of 48 students. I have a lot of students with issues where their sketches will apparently run, but no drawing will appear. I have not yet had a chance to see this happen; we had zero problems in-class on Thursday, but a number of problems manifested over the weekend.
We are attempting to use Py.Processing. Perhaps it is not ready for prime-time?
Either way, I know students have problems on Windows 10/64-bit, but I couldn’t possibly go further in providing information at this point. I know they all downloaded Processing within the past week, so they are current. However, I don’t know what other issues there might be that I need to try and diagnose.
I would welcome either 1) pointers to solutions, or 2) recommendations to abandon Py.Processing. I chose Py.Processing because many of my students have seen Python before, and the consistency of experience was what I was going for. If I jumped without looking closely enough, I could consider switching to… p5.js?.. and have an in-browser experience (and, thus, perhaps get consistency across platforms)?
Thoughts welcome. I have class tomorrow at 8AM, and expect to face some frustration. Suggestions welcome.
I experimented with pyprocessing some years ago https://github.com/monkstone/pyprocessing-experiments it worked OK but was rather slow, but it did have a advantage of being regular python. Even if current problems get ironed out for python mode for processing, there is a potential problem in that jython does not seem to be actively developed. I have been rather more fortunate with jruby (actively developed) that I use for JRubyArt.
Somehow you gave me the idea to copy my laptop’s “PythonMode/” folder to my desktop PC.
And it just worked after that!
Seems like even though PDE’s Contribution Manager says it’s gonna download Python Mode build 3049, it actually downloads build 3050!
Just checked that build 3050’s “PythonMode.jar” file was compiled by Java 11.
AFAIK, Java 11 is still incompatible w/ current PDE! Needs to be at most Java 8.
Many thanks, @GoToLoop. Normally I don’t download random .jar files and distribute them to my students, but you’ve got a sweet bike in your Github profile image, so you must be trustworthy.
I really appreciate the rapid look into this, and I will report back after I try the .jar replacement with a few of the students. If it works, it is worth filing as a proper bug against the repos, I would think.
Again, thank you for your .jar. We successfully applied it to a Windows Surface machine, and to a Mac running Mojave. I know there’s still a few more out there who had problems and will be applying the fix, but it looks like it eliminated the critical issue we were having. So, again, thank you.
Next, I have to work with IT on firewall issues on the campus desktops, but we know why that is a problem, and how to fix it.
Just popping in to say thank you to @GoToLoop and report that this solution still work, at least for OSX 10.2.6. You can find more information about the issue here but was last updated Sept. 24, 2018.
Java 9 includes major changes to how the VM interacts with the OS, particularly on macOS.
At the moment, it’s likely not even possible to use Processing with Java 9 or later, due to several internal changes that break Processing libraries or the PDE itself.
That doesn’t explain why most people are not having this issue, but there’s a lot of unexplained things when your code works (and the universe in general) so it’s a shoulder shrug on that one.
The link @GoToLoop provided has since been removed in a commit but if you go back in the commit history you can download it here.
