In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Steve Krouse about val.town, what it is, his philosophies on teaching people to code, the tech stack for val.town, and the benefits of inspiring kids to learn to code.

Show Notes

• 00:36 Welcome
• 01:27 Who is Steve Krouse?
• Steve Krouse

Future of Coding

stevekrouse (Steve Krouse) · GitHub

Steve Krouse (@stevekrouse) on Twitter

Coding Classes for Kids & Teens | Coding for Kids | The Coding Space

03:06 What is Val.town?

Val Town

08:35 Where did the inspiration for social dev environments come from?

12:52 WYSIWYG code vs being code first

16:30 How does val.town inspire people?

20:26 How do you prevent people abusing val.town?

24:57 What’s the UI story for snippets on val.town?

27:31 Do you plan to support express?

29:03 What’s the tech stack behind the front end of val.town?

30:35 What’s the tech stack for the back end of val.town?

34:37 How do you measure for pricing?

37:07 Who is using val.town?

42:00 What’s your methodology for teaching kids to code?

47:44 Supper Club questions

GitHub - pomdtr/sunbeam: Generate powerful TUIs from simple scripts written in any language.

Deno — A modern runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript

A Small Matter of Programming

The Unison language

CodeMirror

A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing

Stripe Press — Ideas for progress

pomdtr/sunbeam: Generate powerful TUIs from simple scripts written in any language.

Seymour Papert

woofjs.com

Bret Victor

Welcome | Future of Coding

Tom MacWright (@tmcw)

55:54 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

• SwitchBot Wi-Fi Smart Lock

Shameless Plugs

• Val Town

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Wes Bos on Bluesky

Scott on Bluesky

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