I just started with Processing for the first time yesterday and it got me thinking straight away that it'd be good for this sort of thing. It's super simple to

I just started with Processing for the first time yesterday and it got me thinking straight away that it'd be good for this sort of thing. It's super simple to get started with, just a single download gives you a (very basic) "IDE" with loads of examples built in (ranging from very simple to pretty complicated). The other thing is that it's all very visual from the get-go so you can really see what you're doing.