Research- Computer-Generated Randomness

Before I delved any deeper into code I decided that it would be a good idea to broaden my understanding of fundamental computer science. Looking into many critical voices within the programming/coding community I managed to work out how randomization works. It is essentially always based on numbers. For example if I wanted to base something on a random number between 1-100 I would simply type: value = rand() * 100;.

I utilized texts such as: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~germain/PPS/Topics/random_numbers.html which gives an extremely basic, easy to understand, step-by-step guide about how random number generation works. One of the most important critical voices in this field is Daniel Shiffman; a programmer who is focused on developing tutorials, libraries and instructional video guides on how to code with JavaScript, p5js and Processing. Shiffman is also an author and his book The Nature of Code is a book I am currently in the process of reading, it is full of incredibly important material that is shining new light on the possibilities of code for me.

Shiffman is particularly interested in transforming natural occurrences into something he can create within code. During the preface of his book he writes "The goal of this book is simple. We want to take a look at something that naturally occurs in our physical world, then determine how we can write code to simulate that occurrence."

The idea of taking something naturally occurring and replicating it within lines upon lines of code inspires me, it feels like a distinctly human thing to do. To take something that works fine and recreate it for our own achievement.

After reading the words of Shiffman and following along some of his more basic tutorials I feel I have gained a much more experimental view on what is truly possible using code. The possibilities are endless and gaining that information has made me even more excited to get deeper into this project.

I have attached an example of the work of Daniel Shiffman; These fractal trees are something you can create even with a very basic understanding of code.

Shiffman, D (2012). The Nature of Code. Unknown: Unknown. p9.