L5
2025 - present
L5 is a fun, fast, cross-platform, and lightweight implementation of the Processing API in Lua. It is a free and open source coding library to make interactive artwork on the computer, aimed at artists, designers, and anyone that wants a flexible way to prototype art, games, toys, and other software experiments in code.
L5 is designed to work cross-platform, including on desktop, phone, and tablet. Beyond running fast on modern machines, L5 is optimized for older and lower-powered devices, minimizing resource usage to keep creative coding accessible to everyone. This helps with our goal of building resilient, long-lasting software projects. L5 is built in Lua, a robust but lightweight, long-running, lightning-fast, extensible language.
L5 brings the familiar Processing creative coding environment to Lua, offering some of the best aspects of both Processing and p5.js with some twists of its own. But you don't need to know Processing already to get started with L5. L5 is built on top of the Love2D framework, and offers near-instant loading times and excellent performance while maintaining the intuitive API that makes Processing accessible to artists and designers. L5 is not an official implementation of Processing or the Processing Foundation. It is a community-created project.Key Features of L5
- Lightning fast: Scripts, images, and audio load near-instantly
- Easy syntax: Easy to learn and consistent syntax.
- Minimal footprint: L5 (~6MB, from Love2D ~4.5MB + LuaJIT ~1.5MB) vs Processing (~500MB) vs p5.js (~1-4MB + browser ~250-355MB)
- Lighter impact: Runs on older hardware and devices.
- Cross-platform: Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Raspberry Pi
- Synchronous execution: Code runs in predictable order, no async complexity
- Desktop-focused: Optimized for installations and standalone applications
- Resiliency: Underlying Lua language and Love2d frameworks change much slower than equivalent languages like JavaScript and Java