Show HN: Pulsar – Micro creative coding playground

Hey everyone, here is a small project that truly brings me joy. It allows you to create and share animations using code. Instead of me explaining, please try playing with it. If it doesn't click right away, consider going through a tutorial.

Pulsar is inspired by something I came across on HN a while ago. Unable to find it again, I decided to create my own version. I swear, only after finishing Pulsar I managed to find it again [1].

As a bonus, I wanted to run these animations on my DIY LED frame. Check out the video:

https://github.com/Stanko/pulsar/tree/dev#led-retro-frame

I intended to write a blog post before sharing it on HN, but that is taking forever. So, I'll just give you a few technical details:

It is built in TypeScript and is open source. User code is executed in a web worker to minimize the risk of malicious use. I'm proud of the solution, and I find it quite nifty. Initially, I used to render it as an SVG, but in order to create GIFs for the frame, I switched to canvas. SVG gave me a few headaches which I'll cover in a blog post (if I ever write one). The syntax highlighter is a trick I found on Stack Overflow. The textarea is transparent, and as you type in it, the code is highlighted and placed into a div which lays on top of the textarea.

So, that is Pulsar. I hope it will be as fun for you as it is for me. Let me know what you think.

And here is a simple animation of a Christmas tree, happy holidays!

https://muffinman.io/pulsar/?grid=classic&animate=both&code=...

[1] https://tixy.land/