nowfound

Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

II

24 alternatives to Imba – I have spent 7 years creating a programming language for the web

Hey all My name is Sindre, and I am the CTO of Scrimba (YC S20). For the last 7 years, I have written all my web apps in a full-stack programming language called Imba. It compiles to JavaScript and its main goal is to make web developers more productive. I just launched a major overhaul of Imba, so I wanted to share it here on HN, in case anyone are interested in learning more about it. It is very opinionated, so some of you might not like it, but I would love to hear anyones feedback regardless. Constructive criticism appreciated! The backstory: Imba initially started in 2012 as an effort…

Imba is a full-stack programming language that compiles to JavaScript, designed to improve web developer productivity. Created by Sindre, CTO of Scrimba, it combines Ruby-like elegance with tight DOM integration and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Imba – I have spent 7 years creating a programming language for the web launched in 2021; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Today I launched an Imba course for Scrimba.com. Imba is an amazing language for building web applications, that deserves more attention. 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…

    2022 · scrimba.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Imba is a programming language for building web applications with insane performance. You can use it both for the server and client.

    2021 · imba.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Helping devs learn by merging the IDE and video into one

    2025 · scrimba.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Imba▲8

    A new programming language, just for the web

    2016 · imba.io · its alternatives →

  5. 5NJ

    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…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  6. 6IB
  7. 7YA

    About a year ago, I stumbled upon a new Nodejs language called "Imba", I found this language to be interesting and it seemed like it had a lot of potential. Doing a bit of digging, I realized no one had created a framework for it, so what did a normal dev do? Well, a normal dev went ahead and created another Nodejs Framework, only this time it was meant for Imba. So what did I create? I created a batteries included Framework heavily inspired by Laravel but it runs on Nodejs, and uses Imba as the default language, but you can actually use TypeScript or JavaScript. In fact, when creating a new…

    2022 · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    a lightweight web framework in c. Contribute to ashtonjamesd/lavandula development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    WeWeb▲537

    Create websites faster with a next-generation visual builder

    2021 · weweb.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    No-code marketplace builder, fully extendable with code

    2024 · sharetribe.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Everything you need to build apps without code.

    2018 · zeroqode.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12AE

    easyprog.online ist Ihre erste und beste Informationsquelle über easyprog. Hier finden Sie auch weitere interessante Links. Wir hoffen, dass Sie bei Ihrer Suche erfolgreich sind!

    2019 · easyprog.online · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Code.xyz▲378

    The online code editor for building APIs in a single click.

    2018 · namekeeper.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Zeroqode▲441

    Build your app up to 10x faster with no-code app templates

    2017 · zeroqode.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Vybe▲266

    Lovable for internal apps

    Dec 2025 · vybe.build · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi friends, I started casually working on scrapscript in 2015. I built a few compilers over the years to test out various ideas/implementations, and I think I'm finally happy with the overall design. The code is not public yet. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested in joining the core team later this year. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)

    2023 · scrapscript.org · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Write interactive web app in script way. Contribute to pywebio/PyWebIO development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    CodeWords▲385

    Hey HN, Aymeric here, co-founder of Agemo and maker of CodeWords. Generating nice-looking UIs with AI has been democratized now thanks to tools like Lovable, v0 and bolt. Going from natural language to a complex back-end workflow is still an unsolved problem. We started our journey by researching neurosymbolic methods applied to software/code generation problems and it landed us a feature in the ARC-AGI report last year (https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04604). We've now applied this research to build an AI-native workflow automation platform to enable builders of any…

    2025 · agemo.ai · its alternatives →

  19. 19HH

    Source https://github.com/dashborg/hibiki | Interactive Tutorial https://playground.hibikihtml.com/tutorial/ I love JavaScript, but for many projects -- especially internal tools and prototypes -- setting up a full frontend JavaScript stack (npm, webpack, babel, create-react-app, redux) and all of their configuration files, folders, and scaffolding is overkill. Hibiki HTML incrementally plugs into any backend, using any template language (even static HTML files) with a single script include. It includes a built-in frontend data model, Vue.js-like…

    2022 · playground.hibikihtml.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    StackerX▲257

    No-Code internal tools powered by Airtable, GSheets + more

    2021 · stacker.ai · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hey! I’m JC. I’m 17 and part of Hack Club, a nonprofit where we help teenagers ship programming projects with their friends while growing technically. A while ago, I asked myself the question, “How exactly do programming languages work behind the scenes?” It seemed really daunting until I went to a half hour workshop at a high school hackathon about writing a tree-walk interpreter and realized that getting started was actually super fun. This guide is designed in the vein of that - to get people, especially teenagers, started on learning how to build a programming language in a literal…

    2024 · easel.hackclub.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Run your favourite programming languages online

    2019 · mycompiler.io · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Today we’re releasing a full AI app builder in Srcbook. We released our TypeScript notebook a few months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41291700) and the response was encouraging, but we kept hearing that people wanted to build interactive apps. Today we are releasing just that. You can think of it as an open-source and local version of vercel’s v0. We actually think of it as something in between an IDE and that, because we believe the code matters and don’t shy away from that: you can view and edit the code in a full editor, but prompt your way forward if that's…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey all, I just wanted to share a project I've been working on for the past month. After years of heavy frameworks, I really like the idea of using htmx, but it’s a little too low level for me and needs a thin layer above it to facilitate things like components, better syntax with complex JS inside of an attribute, etc To try and solve this problem with a very minimal stack (golang + htmx) that I've been really enjoying, I'm building this project to cater to my needs and was thinking it would be useful for other developers.

    2024 · htmgo.dev · its alternatives →

Also compare

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →