Using MDArray in ruby-processing

Well quite excited with this jruby gets its own flavour of numpy, namely MDArray. I had to give it a go here is a simple example:-

#  Demonstrates the syntax for creating a two-dimensional (2D) array,
#  fromfunction (actually a block) using MDArray (for jruby).
#  Values in a 2D array are accessed through two index values.  
#  2D arrays are useful for storing images. In this example, each dot 
#  is colored in relation to its distance from the center of the image.

require 'mdarray'

WIDTH=640
HEIGHT=360
SKIP=10

def setup
  size WIDTH, HEIGHT
  background 0
  stroke_weight 2
  max_distance = ( (WIDTH / 2 - WIDTH)**2  + (HEIGHT / 2 - HEIGHT)**2 )**0.5
  distances = MDArray.fromfunction("float", [WIDTH, HEIGHT]) do |x, y|
    255 * ( (WIDTH / 2 - x)**2  + (HEIGHT / 2 - y)**2 )**0.5 / max_distance
  end
  (SKIP ... WIDTH).step(SKIP) do |x|
      (SKIP ... HEIGHT).step(SKIP) do |y|
        stroke distances[x, y]
        point x, y
      end
  end
end

According to the limited documentation it might be more efficient to use the accessor to "get" data rather than using bare array access see below. For actual image manipulation in ruby-processing we might be in a bind, we require external jruby to access the gem, but that appears not to work with PImage sketches?

distances.get([x, y])