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    Show HN: Node.js video tutorials where you can edit and run the code

    258 points somebee | 11 comments | 23 Apr 25 12:35 UTC | HN request time: 1.228s | source | bottom

    Hey HN,

    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!

    1. porsager ◴[23 Apr 25 13:40 UTC] No.43772067[source]▶
    Imba is probably one of the best kept web development secrets! Sindre has done a remarkable job of making an insanely terse while powerfull language for building web applications. Not that it's limited to web applications only, the syntax translates perfectly for any other area as well.

    The fact that a platform like Scrimba was built using this language and probably only a handfull developers should make you want to learn from someone like that even more!

    It's also the only learning platform I've ever recommended where I see people staying and learning more.

    replies(6): >>43772597 #>>43773213 #>>43773428 #>>43773530 #>>43773551 #>>43774328 #
    2. pier25 ◴[23 Apr 25 14:23 UTC] No.43772597[source]▶
    I'm hoping Imba will get more attention with the upcoming v2 release. It has tons of cool ideas and the "no reactivity" state paradigm is so much easier to reason about.

    Also its css notation is what Tailwind should have been.

    Btw you're the Postgres.js author, right?

    replies(1): >>43772790 #
    3. porsager ◴[23 Apr 25 14:42 UTC] No.43772790[source]▶
    It's got all the right decision for the scope it's covering!

    Yeah, I'm the author of Postgres.js, although it hasn't gotten the tlc it deserved lately cause I've been too busy with another soon to be public project.

    4. barrenko ◴[23 Apr 25 15:22 UTC] No.43773213[source]▶
    Not sure of how much help is it to OP, but I'd also like to commend Imba's front page paint demo, it's just so neat.
    replies(1): >>43773656 #
    5. flanbiscuit ◴[23 Apr 25 15:43 UTC] No.43773428[source]▶
    Something seems to be broken in the Imba website for me in both FF and Chrome for MacOS.

    When I go to the main website: https://imba.io/

    Then click on the "Demo" button

    I get taken to the "Playground": https://imba.io/try/examples/apps/playground/app.imba

    There is no code on the page but the preview seems to work. Same thing with all of the other examples. They work in the Preview panel, but no code loads at all.

    Looking in the dev console I see a few errors:

       GET https://imba.io/monaco/min/vs/loader.js HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

   Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined
  
   current file did set undefined
    Some images and a preflight.css is also not found
    6. gizzlon ◴[23 Apr 25 15:52 UTC] No.43773530[source]▶
    There's a free Scribe course on Imba: https://scrimba.com/learn-imba-c01h

    Haven't gotten around to it yet, hope it's still relevant :P

    replies(1): >>43784142 #
    7. ushakov ◴[23 Apr 25 15:54 UTC] No.43773551[source]▶
    fun fact I learned about Imba is that it's name stands for "imbalance" (like in computer games!)
    8. evnp ◴[23 Apr 25 16:04 UTC] No.43773656[source]▶
    It's beautiful, but note to OP it doesn't work great on Android Chrome for me - can only draw very very short lines.
    9. ilrwbwrkhv ◴[23 Apr 25 17:13 UTC] No.43774328[source]▶
    [flagged]
    replies(1): >>43789654 #
    10. trafnar ◴[24 Apr 25 15:46 UTC] No.43784142[source]▶
    It's still relevant, the language hasn't changed much since I made this course.
    11. dang ◴[25 Apr 25 02:45 UTC] No.43789654[source]▶
    Could you please stop posting shallow dismissals and putdowns? We've asked you this many times, and if you keep it up we'll end up having to ban you.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html