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This looks fantastic! I’ve been seeing a growing number of tools trying to bring more interactivity to programming tutorials and for good reason. Screencasts ar

by seansh 1y ago

This looks fantastic! I’ve been seeing a growing number of tools trying to bring more interactivity to programming tutorials and for good reason. Screencasts are too passive, and it’s easy to get lost halfway through. Books and blogs don’t really show how code evolves over time either. I’m working on a solution too, called CodeMic [1] where instead of bringing the environment to the web, it brings video and workspace sync into the IDE so viewers can follow along directly inside their own editor. You’ve done an impressive job integrating everything, including the Console for example, that’s especially tricky to pull off in an extension for VSCode, Emacs, or Vim. [1] https://CodeMic.io https://CodeMic.io

mrborgen 1y ago
CodeMic looks very cool, well done! A lot of people have asked us over the years whether we they can implement Scrimba into their preferred IDE, so it makes total sense to take that approach as well.
jasonjmcghee 1y ago
Interactivity and liveness in programming deserves to be discussed far more often than it is on front-page of hacker news, but excited there are multiple ongoing threads! I'm a very strong supporter of interactive blogposts as well. Obviously https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/ is leader here - being able to mess with something to build intuition is huge.
- oulipo 1y ago
  you should check what Bret Victor https://worrydream.com/ https://worrydream.com/ is doing at Dynamicland https://dynamicland.org/2024/Intro/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/Intro/
  - jasonjmcghee 1y ago
    I'm a huge fan of Bret Victor and very familiar with his incredible work. The links are great (people should check them out!) Anyone who hasn't watched his famous talk from 2012 should watch it "Inventing on Principle" https://youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII https://youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII
- seansh 1y ago
  Agreed. ciechanow.ski has been a huge inspiration, as well as 3blue1brown, Bret Victor, and Chris Granger (remember Light Table?). But none of them provide a way to walk through thousands of lines of real code and show how it is built and evolves over time. That is the key problem Scrimba and CodeMic are trying to solve. The two people I have seen who really master this are Robert Nystrom (Crafting Interpreters) and Casey Muratori (Handmade Hero). But even they are limited by the mediums they use: books and videos, which are not ideal for this kind of guided exploration.

by seansh 1y ago

mrborgen 1y ago

CodeMic looks very cool, well done! A lot of people have asked us over the years whether we they can implement Scrimba into their preferred IDE, so it makes total sense to take that approach as well.

jasonjmcghee 1y ago

Interactivity and liveness in programming deserves to be discussed far more often than it is on front-page of hacker news, but excited there are multiple ongoing threads! I'm a very strong supporter of interactive blogposts as well. Obviously https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/ is leader here - being able to mess with something to build intuition is huge.

oulipo 1y ago
you should check what Bret Victor https://worrydream.com/ https://worrydream.com/ is doing at Dynamicland https://dynamicland.org/2024/Intro/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/Intro/
- jasonjmcghee 1y ago
  I'm a huge fan of Bret Victor and very familiar with his incredible work. The links are great (people should check them out!) Anyone who hasn't watched his famous talk from 2012 should watch it "Inventing on Principle" https://youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII https://youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII
seansh 1y ago
Agreed. ciechanow.ski has been a huge inspiration, as well as 3blue1brown, Bret Victor, and Chris Granger (remember Light Table?). But none of them provide a way to walk through thousands of lines of real code and show how it is built and evolves over time. That is the key problem Scrimba and CodeMic are trying to solve. The two people I have seen who really master this are Robert Nystrom (Crafting Interpreters) and Casey Muratori (Handmade Hero). But even they are limited by the mediums they use: books and videos, which are not ideal for this kind of guided exploration.