What is Creative Coding?

In order to understand the concept of creative coding, is necessary to establish a parallel with the commercial programming: while the commercial programming develops products to attend to the demands of the market, "creative coding" is the denomination for the use of computers for creative purposes, or as a means of expression, which may or may not be a commercial product. Both make use of computer programming, but there is a huge diference between them: the amount of responsibility and individual expression. A software for a bank or for an automatic flight control system can't fail and, surely, the inner feelings of the programmer doesn't matter.
Creative coding is a broader term that computer art, because computer art refers specifically to the approach of computer science with the practices that are traditionally classified as art, while the creative coding covers all creative use of computational tools, in specific programming, including game development, design, architecture, engineering, electronics, which may not be framed as art in the strict sense.
Creative coding is a term in the boundary between science, technology, art and design (and many other areas), which causes much confusion for the average person. Despite the creative use of the programming can not be considered as a novelty, since there are experiments in this area dating from the 60's , the term is little known, even in institutions where creativity is seen as a basic feature. I studied at the School of Fine Arts of UFMG and only heard this term in the last semester, when the teacher that was my supervisor,  Chico Marinho, talked about this area in informal conversations (away from the curriculum).
If most of the teachers of art disregard the computation as a creative tool - or even act prejudicially against any form of expression that escape from the traditionalism, imagine those outside the academic environment ...
The aesthetic value is not mandatory, as well as the functionality, but both may be present, and sometimes simultaneously.

Creative coding can be regarded as an underground subculture, with its own characteristics, being a community that tend to be attracted by the open source tools, operating collaboratively, sharing code, creating and sharing libraries, participating actively in the maintenance, growth and development of the community.
The program languages​​, despite being (almost) exclusively in English, are universal, emphasizing the integration between people who share interests and point of view.
The tooling is broad, with varying degrees of complexity, with new members joining every day around the world. The potential is enormous, ranging since rough prototypes to professional works, depending on the use made of this tool.

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