ChucK was first released in 2003 by Ge Wang, around the same time as Supercollider 3, leading to the emergence of live coding and founding of TOPLAP. Whereas the possibility of live coding in SuperCollider 3 arose almost by mistake, “on-the-fly programming” was designed in to ChucK from the start. It’s straightforward syntax, “strongly timed” sample accuracy, and enigmatic proponents have led to the growth of a strong community across the years, which appears to centre around the laptop orchestras (LOrcs) of North America.
From the outside it seemed ChucK had been going through a quiet period, but clearly things have been going on behind the scenes, as a new version of ChucK has appeared, with easy installers for Mac and Windows (Linux users can compile), arduino integration, string handling and regex, MIDI file parsing, a rewritten editor for Windows and Linux, and many bugfixes (full changelog).
Along with this comes the exciting announcement of a free ChucK-based MOOC (Massive Open On-Line Course) led by Ajay Kapur called Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists, with a book of the same name to follow. You can sign up for the MOOC now, which starts 21st October 2013.
Congrats to the ChucK team!
