# Conditionals

**Track:** Foundations — Creative Coding — the existing 50
**Framework / surface:** p5.js
**Level:** Beginner
**Prerequisites:** Variables

**In one line:** if / else — how a program makes a decision and reacts.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

A conditional is the point where a program chooses. Tested against a state — a position, a count, a click — an if/else branch sends execution one way or another, the computational descendant of the Boolean logic George Boole set out in his 1854 Laws of Thought, where every question reduces to true or false. Aesthetically, the branch is what lets a system behave rather than merely render: rules that respond produce variety without a human deciding each case. Sol LeWitt's conditional wall-drawing instructions anticipate this exactly. The decision is small, but accumulated across thousands of frames or marks, it is where character and surprise enter the work.