Show HN: My free course for learning Imba
scrimba.com
Watch my announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDSIsvZJhow
Take the course (it's free): https://www.scrimba.com/learn/imba
Some context:
I fell in love with the Imba programming language a couple years ago and quit my job to spend all my time building projects with Imba. The first one being TaskTXT (https://www.tasktxt.com), a plaintext notepad with built-in timers. It's full of UI details that were a joy to build with Imba. Trying to build things like this with React in the past honestly made me feel dumb.
Imba (https://www.imba.io) is a language that compiles to Javascript, like TypeScript or JSX. Imba's syntax diverges much more from Javascript, looking more like Python or Ruby. It's compatible with Javascript and Typescript and NPM modules. It also has fantastic VSCode tooling and even supports TypeScript types.
I like Imba syntax better than JS, but the real selling point is the built-in features for building web UI. Imba has first-class support for html tags, css styles, and custom web components. Those are all parts of the language. For me, Imba has replaced Javascript, HTML, CSS and React.
Imba's "Memoized DOM" model for updating the UI is an order of magnitude faster than virtual DOM approaches. This allows for simple state management, because you can pretty much re-render the whole UI whenever you want and Imba manages to do that very efficiently. There's an older article about this here (https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-virtual-dom-is-slow-me...) if you want to dig into the technical details.
People often ask for examples of things made with Imba, and the most prominent one is the learn-to-code site, Scrimba.com and its interactive editor. Scrimba was was built by Sindre (creator of Imba) and the Scrimba team. The fact that Scrimba's editor was made with Imba grabbed my attention when I first learned about the language. It's one of the most impressive web applications I've ever seen.
Sindre originally built Scrimba to share Imba, but until now there's not been a real Imba course on Scrimba! So, I'm pleased to be fixing that today.
I know Imba looks strange to a lot of people. Imba programmers are used to people looking at it and declaring it to be stupid and wrong. An open mind is required. Imba doesn't have to be for everyone, but for a certain type of developer who values design, and wants to build expressive UI quickly, it's pure magic.