somebee

I'm Sindre, CTO of Scrimba (YC S20). We originally launched Scrimba to make video learning more interactive for aspiring frontend developers. So instead of passively watching videos, you can jump in an experiment with the code directly inside the video player. Since launch, almost two million people have used Scrimba to grow their skills.

However, one limitation is that we've only supported frontend code, as our interactive videos run in the browser, whereas most of our learners want to go fullstack—building APIs, handling auth, working with databases, and so forth.

To fix this, we spent the last 6 months integrating StackBlitz WebContainers into Scrimba. This enables a full Node.js environment—including a terminal, shell, npm access, and a virtual file system—directly inside our video player. Everything runs in the browser.

Here is a 2-minute recorded demo: https://scrimba.com/s08dpq3nom

If you want to see more, feel free to enroll into any of the seven fullstack courses we've launched so far, on subject like Node, Next, Express, SQL, Vite, and more. We've opened them up for Hacker News today so that you don't even need to create an account to watch the content:

https://scrimba.com/fullstack

Other notable highlights about our "IDE videos":

- Based on events (code edits, cursor moves, etc) instead of pixels

- Roughly 100x smaller than traditional videos

- Recording is simple: just talk while you code

- Can be embedded in blogs, docs, or courses, like MDN does here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/curriculum/core/css-fund...

- Entirely built in Imba, a language I created myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28207662

We think this format could be useful for open-source maintainers and API-focused teams looking to create interactive docs or walkthroughs. Our videos are already embedded by MDN, LangChain, and Coursera.

If you maintain a library or SDK and want an interactive video about it, let us know—happy to record one for free that you can use however you like.

Would love to answer any questions or hear people's feedback!

My name is Sindre, and I am the CTO of Scrimba (YC S20). For the last 7 years, I have written all my web apps in a full-stack programming language called Imba. It compiles to JavaScript and its main goal is to make web developers more productive.

I just launched a major overhaul of Imba, so I wanted to share it here on HN, in case anyone are interested in learning more about it. It is very opinionated, so some of you might not like it, but I would love to hear anyones feedback regardless. Constructive criticism appreciated!

The backstory:

Imba initially started in 2012 as an effort to bring the elegance and conciseness of Ruby into the browser, and also because I felt that JavaScript and the DOM should be more tightly coupled together. Over the years, I have taken inspiration from React/JSX, and also Tailwind.

Since 2013, I have built several business-critical apps in Imba, so this is not a toy project or an academic exercise, it is extracted from a real project trying to solve real problems. Today, we are currently a small but passionate community of devs who use Imba all over the world.

The nitty-gritty details:

As mentioned, Imba compiles to JavaScript, and it works on both the frontend and backend. The quickest way to get a feeling of how it works is by checking out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XS5q9xhaMc

Alternatively, here is a list of the main benefits of the language:

* Clean syntax with built-in tags and inline styles

* Imba's Memoized DOM approach is *an order of magnitude* faster than Virtual DOMs (Vue, React). Learn more here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-virtual-dom-is-slow-me...

* Imba works with Node and the npm ecosystem, and integrates tightly with both JS and TypeScript

* Blazing-fast dev/build tools based on esbuild

Each of the benefits above are explained more thoroughly in our docs here, so please check it out if any of the above points spark your interest: https://imba.io

With this version I feel that I am very close to my vision for what Imba should be. In other words; it is finally ready for public consumption. I'd wholeheartedly advice you to look into it and give it a whirl if you are interested in web development :)

Hope you like it, and please share any feedback you might have in the comments!

PS! We're also hiring Imba developers at Scrimba - see https://jobs.scrimba.com/. We don't expect you to be a seasoned Imba developer, but we expect you to pick it up fast :)