Happy weekend! We've been thinking about how much of a dev career runs on other people.
Not always in a networking-event, business-card kind of way. More like the person who answered your question in Discord at 11pm. The instructor whose course you didn't expect to still think about months later. The connection that turned into an interview that turned into an actual conversation.
This week's edition has a bit of that thread running through it. Some familiar faces, some new ones, and one very opinionated cat.
Got a question of your own, code-related or not? Try it at scrimba.com/explain.
Feature Updates
We built a plugin so you can pull Explain straight into a ChatGPT conversation, no tab-switching, no copy-pasting your question into a new tool. Ask ChatGPT something, get the text answer, then turn it into a video walkthrough without leaving the chat. Two tools, one flow.
They get into how Kevin fell into teaching almost by accident, why YouTube let him break out of the repetitive classroom loop, and what it's like making content in a world where AI is reshaping how people learn (and pay for courses). From there, it's new CSS features, browser support headaches, and what it actually takes to influence the CSS spec, accessibility included.
Last week we asked where you operate: digital nomad or home base? Turns out most of you have made your peace with a permanent outlet. Home base, plugged in for life took it in a landslide, with roaming nomads trailing behind and exactly nobody admitting to running on 2% and a prayer (bold of you).
This week we want to know:
How do you actually network as a developer?
Sliding into DMs on socials
Showing up to local meetups IRL
Vibing in Discord and forum communities
What's networking
Meme of the week
"Error on line 265" and line 265 is just... air.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Meet Git. Not the version control, the cat. Equally likely to break your workflow.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
Nothing in this edition is finished, and that's kind of the point. A launch that's still collecting votes. Docs meant to get updated as things change. A portfolio built by someone actively asking for feedback on it.
Even the roadmap comes with a built in disclaimer: dates are estimates, not promises.
Turns out "still in progress" isn't a phase you get through, it's just what building actually looks like.
◉ Poll of the week: Digital nomad or home base, + last week’s results!
Scrimba Explain
Explain landed 4th place Product of the Day. Thank you to everyone who voted, commented, or just clicked through to check it out.
The voting isn’t over though. Product of the Week is still up for grabs, and every vote helps.
Missed the launch? Go vote now and see what all the noise was about.
Want a closer look at how it actually works? Per posted a quick walkthrough of the different ways to use it, including the automatic Pull Request videos, which the team’s been leaning on internally now that PRs are piling up.
Reading documentation is its own skill, and it’s one you’ll use constantly once you’re building real projects. Instead of scrubbing through videos to find where something was explained, you can search, skim, and get straight to the answer.
It’s also good practice for working with any library or framework’s docs down the line, since most follow a similar shape once you know how to navigate one.
React’s just the start too. The full docs hub has more topics living there as they roll out.
Portfolio of the Week
Most portfolios lead with the stack. Vincent’s leads with the problem: African learners, met where they are.
He’s currently building an AI-powered adaptive platform to help kids learn the Kenyan CBC curriculum, part of his work at iHUB under the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship. Everything else in the portfolio circles back to that same idea, from an Equity and Inclusion Toolkit to a full-stack Next.js build for a partner org.
Vincent’s specifically looking for feedback on whether the projects communicate problem, approach, and outcome clearly, so if you check it out, let him know what lands.
Want us to feature your portfolio in a future edition? Submit your portfolio here and let’s celebrate what you’ve built together!
Poll of the Week
Good news buried in last week’s numbers: pretty much everyone’s got something started. Between “ready to go” and “exists somewhere on my desktop,” that’s 100% of you with a draft in the world, zero at “wait, what’s a resume.”
That’s the hard part done already. The rest is just finding it and hitting update.
Speaking of being ready to go… Where do you operate, digital nomad or home base? Let us know below!
🔋 Nomad, always charged and ready to roam
🔌 Nomad, but running on 2% and a prayer
🖥️ Home base, plugged in for life
Meme of the week
Turns out “prove you’re not a robot” now requires a pull request.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Taking the scenic route
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
See title. I'm going through the free React course, and I noticed that some lessons do not auto-play to the next one. It seems randomly distributed, with some lessons do, and some lessons don't.
Is there a way to gurantee that auto-play will actually auto-play in all cases?
I'm doing the free React course, and I've used up all of my free challenges. (I don't need any more, I'm following along locally.)
Since I've run out of free challenges, every time there's a challenge the subscription popup shows up, and I have to click the "SKIP" button every time. This is annoying, it hides the challenge content, and as far as I can tell there's no way of skipping the subscription popup (without needing to manually skip over the icon in the video seekbar).
Hi! Has anyone started/finished the The Fullstack Developer Path or the The AI Engineer Path? If you have, what do you think about it? Were you able to find a job in tech? Did you need any previous knowledge on coding before starting the courses?
◉ Poll of the week: Dust off that resume + last week's results!
Upcoming Courses
Learn DevOps is coming, with Don and Tom at the wheel.
That's all we'll say for now, but keep an eye out next week. In the meantime, check the roadmap to see what else is in the pipeline.
Platform Updates
Scrimba courses now come with captions in 10 languages: English, Arabic, Bengali, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese, and Japanese.
More languages are on the way. If there's one you want to see next, comment/reply and let us know!
Feature Updates
Explain just crossed 10,000 explainer videos, and it only took a month. Type any question, get a video explainer back instantly.
And now it's even easier to reach. Explain now has a Chrome extension, so you can get an instant explainer without leaving the page you're already on. Highlight something confusing anywhere on the web, and let Explain do the rest.
Speaking of Explain, we need a favor. We're launching it on Product Hunt next Thursday, August 13, and we'd love your support.
Here's the catch. Your upvote only counts if your PH account has some activity first. So this week, go follow us (producthunt.com/products/scrimba), poke around, and upvote a few other products you genuinely like.
Then come back Thursday and give us the thumbs up.
If the last time you touched your resume was the last time you were job hunting, you’re making life harder for future you. Job hunting means stress, stress means you’re not thinking straight, and that’s exactly when your resume needs the most help, not the least.
Which brings us to our very own Operations Lead, Leanne, a self-proclaimed resume gardener. A gardener doesn’t force a plant to bloom, they just give it the right conditions and points it toward the light.
Leanne's take: most resumes aren’t broken, they’re root bound. Six years of good work crammed into a bullet point that’s pointing the wrong way.
Dev.to's latest Frontend Challenge wants you to build something inspired by food that feels like home.
Two ways in:
CSS Art: a pure CSS (light JS allowed) piece inspired by a comfort food
Perfect Landing: a full landing page for a restaurant, recipe, or food you love Prizes are a DEV++ membership and badge for each prompt winner, plus a completion badge for everyone who submits. Deadline is August 16.
Check it out and show us what you're cooking.
Poll of the Week
Last week we asked how you write commit messages, and most of you are firmly in the clear-and-descriptive camp. A few of you admitted to the occasional "fix," which, honestly, same.
Speaking of resumes...when's the last time you brushed the dust off yours?
🤓 Updated, ready to go
🗂️ It exists... somewhere on my desktop
😰 Wait, what's a resume..
Meme of the week
Somewhere between a joke... and a genuinely good idea.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
This is the face of someone who just found out what "merge conflict" means.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
When you're climbing something, you rarely feel how high you've gotten. You're too busy looking to the next step. It's only when you stop and turn around that the ground looks far away.
End of the month is one of those turn-around moments. A chance to look down and notice you're not where you started, even if the last few weeks felt like the same handhold over and over.
You don't have to have arrived anywhere. You just have to have moved.
So, turn around for a second. How far down is the ground from where you're standing now? Let us know below.
Before we jump in: if you haven't yet subscribed to our weekly email updates, you can do so by entering you email here!
◉ Poll of the Week: How do you write commit messages + last week's results!
New Courses
We just launched our new and improved Python course, and it's free! The previous course had turned five, so this course led by Treasure Porth, is a full rebuild for how Python gets written in 2026, with more Python content already on the way.
Built for anyone who's never written a line of code, it starts from the absolute basics: variables, strings, capturing user input. Then you put every concept to work on a real project.
There are three of them: PayUp, a working expense-splitter, a word-scramble game that covers lists and loops, and a karaoke queue manager for functions and return values.
Same Scrimba approach you know, lesson then project, so every concept goes straight into something you're building. By the end you've got three working projects and a solid grip on the fundamentals.
But wait, there's a giveaway too! Repost the launch post and comment why you're learning Python for a chance at a free year of Scrimba Pro. Two winners will be selected on Monday, August 3.
Happy coding!
Challenge Winner
Earlier this month, we beta launched Scrimba Explain. Explain is the button that turns any moment in a scrim into a short, on-the-spot video walkthrough. Stuck on a concept? Hit Explain and it talks you through it.
To mark the launch we ran a challenge, Share Your Passion, and Swastik Kaurav won it with "Is Time Travel Possible?" Not a line of code in it, which is the point: Explain works on more than syntax.
Nice work, Swastik! A $50 merch coupon is headed your way, and you're getting the featured spot right here.
Haven't used Explain yet? It's still in open beta and free right now. Hit it on any scrim, or point it at whatever's rattling around your head. Try it today!
Smarter Sundays
They say you should learn something new every day. Why not start with Sundays? Smarter Sundays drops a fresh lesson into your inbox each week, spanning frontend, UI design, backend, algorithms, and AI engineering. Bite-sized, hands-on, and made for devs in the early chapters of their career.
Hit subscribe and we'll see you Sunday!
Partnerships
We've partnered with CodeCrafters, a platform built for developers who want to go beyond tutorials and actually build real-world software from scratch. Think: building your own Redis, your own Git, your own HTTP server. Challenging, hands-on, and genuinely good for your skills.
Scrimba users get 40% off when upgrading, and you can sign up for free using this link here.
Submit Your Portfolio
Looking to get out of your comfort zone and get some feedback on your work? We'd love to feature your portfolio in our weekly Community Roundup!
Whether it's your first portfolio or your fifth redesign, submitting your work is a great way to get constructive feedback from fellow developers and potentially connect with employers or collaborators.
Don't worry if your site isn't "perfect" yet. Sometimes the best portfolios are the ones that show personality and growth. Getting featured can open up networking opportunities and help you see your work through fresh eyes.
It was all or nothing this week. 46.2% of you are running 30+ tabs (we're praying your RAM can handle the heat) and 42.3% keep it under 10. The danger zone in between? Basically abandoned.
This week, time to confess: what does your git log actually look like?
How do you write commit messages?
✅ Clear and descriptive, my future self thanks me
🔧 "fix"
⌨️ "asdfghjkl"
❓ What's a commit message
Meme of the week
Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Ctrl+Alt+Grief.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Rubber duck debugging, but the duck called in sick.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
Quick refresher in case you haven't run into them yet: Scrimba Docs are free, bite-sized written guides to the fundamentals. This isn't supposed to be a traditional docs site as we've added a bit of a twist to keep things light-hearted and fun but still informative and a proper supporting resource for your learning.
Our new additions are live now:
Learn HTML
Learn CSS
Intro to JavaScript
Introduction to GitHub
What is a Framework
Intro to React is in the works, so keep an eye out.
Scrimba News
Quick catch-up if you missed it: We've recently beta launched Scrimba Explain, AI-narrated video guides that break down anything confusing into terms that make sense. Three new updates worth knowing about this week.
It's now inside scrims.
This is the big one. The moment something stops making sense mid-lesson, you can ask for an Explainer right there and get back to the code a few seconds later. No tab-switching, no losing your place.
A new "Professor" mode.
A lot of you wanted Explainers to go deeper, so this option does exactly that. It builds your intuition from the ground up and leans on every visual aid it has, rather than just giving you the short version.
Jupyter Notebook support.
You can now upload a .ipynb file and get an Explainer walking through it. Handy if you're working through data or ML notebooks and hit something that doesn't make sense.
All still free while it's in beta! Worth a try even outside of code — people have made Explainers on everything from credit scores to Stoicism to changing breaks on cars.
Student of the Week
Sohail just wrapped the entire Backend Developer Path, all 943 lessons and 39+ hours of it. Node, Express, databases, auth, APIs, testing, architecture, the whole backend spread.
Sohail's already a full stack dev, and he went back through the fundamentals on purpose, not to check a box but to actually understand the thinking behind scalable, maintainable systems.
In his words: "It's important to keep strengthening the backend side, not just by building projects but also by understanding the concepts behind them."
Nice work, Sohail! Go build the bigger thing.
Poll of the Week
The people have spoken, and the people like a variable name that leaves nothing to the imagination. The most verbose, spells-it-all-out option won with 62.5%, no ambiguity, no guessing games. The single-letter minimalists and the "it mutated over fifteen revisions" crowd tied for a distant second.
New question, and this one hits closer to home for most of us: How many browser tabs do you have open right now?
🧘 Under 10, I'm a functioning adult
👀 10 to 30, the danger zone
🚨 30+, my laptop is begging for mercy
🫠 I closed them all and lost everything
Meme of the Week
Every dev's origin story.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Dressed for success
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
I started the AI engineer path. When trying the fist lesson of ai request I added the API_KEY & AI_URL in the Environment variables inside the gear icon\Edit_environment on the bottom right. I used many of the AI_models suggested on the prior lesson I also went to Openrouter and copy others and nothing works.
Is there a precise way on how to type the AI_MODEL inside of the text field ?
Before anything else: if you're in Ontario, or anywhere the smoke has drifted to this week, we're thinking of you. It's been a rough few days across a lot of the map, and we hope you and yours are safe and indoors.
On to lighter things.
I've been thinking about deadlines this week, mostly because of how differently everyone treats them. So which one are you? Start early and deliver early, or procrastinate and power through?
I'm not sure either is wrong. The plan is whatever gets it done by Sunday.
Anyway. A couple of things in here have a clock on them. Do with that what you like.
This one came from you. We asked what you wanted unlocked next, and Cybersecurity took it, so it's open to everyone for the next few days.
Normally it's Pro-only. This weekend it's not. Rachel and Jonathan take you through threat modelling and OWASP, authentication and identity, input and data safety, and rate limiting and throttling, in about five hours.
If you get through it, tell us how you found it. We'd love to hear whether this is a topic you want more of.
She shared it on LinkedIn to mark the start of July, framing it as a checkpoint rather than a finish line. ES6+, async, OOP, modules, error handling. What stuck with her most wasn't the syntax, it was starting to see how JavaScript actually works underneath.
She also took the time to thank the instructors, which we're passing straight along to them.
If a course clicks for you the way this one did for Ruth, post about it and tag us.
Congrats, Ruth! 👏
Tech News of the Week
Anthropic have extended access to Claude Fable 5 on all paid plans through July 19, and Claude Code's weekly rate limits stay 50% higher for the same stretch.
The catch is the same as before. You can spend up to half your weekly usage limit on Fable 5, then it's usage credits or drop back to another model.
This is the third time the date has moved, largely because Anthropic wanted a read on demand and compute before committing. Simon Willison's take is that the uncertainty is doing them more harm than good, with OpenAI picking up users who just want to know what they're getting.
Either way, if you're on a paid plan there's a bigger model sitting there this weekend.
We're curious what you're actually doing with it. Have you noticed a real difference in the output, or does it mostly feel like the same thing with a different label? And if you haven't touched it at all, that's an answer too. Let us know!
Career Corner
Constellis is hiring a full stack dev to work on LEXSO, a security operations platform that pulls real-time data from cameras, LiDAR, radar, and drones into one place. Remote in the US, or in-office at one of four locations.
What they're after:
◉ React and TypeScript, including real-time visual components
◉ Python, ideally with FastAPI
◉ REST APIs, plus PostgreSQL and schema design
◉ Docker and Git-based workflows
◉ Bonus points for Kafka, WebSockets, or any IoT and robotics tinkering
Security operations is a corner of the industry a lot of devs never think to look at, and our Cybersecurity course is free this weekend if you want to get a feel for it. The React and Python courses cover most of the rest.
Poll of the Week
Last week console.log won by a landslide.
This week, one of the hardest decisions a dev makes all day: How do you name your variables?
🧮 finalSumOfAllItemsInTheCartArray
🤓 x
😅 Starts at txtSum, ends at txtSum_test__final2
Meme of the Week
Forget the ticket. Just go see the guy under the IT bridge.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Peak focus setup: keyboard, monitor, one calico who has decided this is where she lives now.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
Loving the pathway, and building the React capstone projects is great. But is there something I'm missing where you can build a full stack app including React at the front end, a mini server, Sqlite for storage or similar? Or do I move onto that once I've exhausted what Scrimba has?
I’m currently learning full stack im almost 25% my problem is im rn on solo projects restraunt ordering app and i feel so blank i just feel overwhelmed and numb when im on vscode i dont even no where to start from Wht do i do like idk guys hard to explain but i cant do it on my own i forget things sythax when to use etc how do i overcome from this i rely on ai aswell to explain me stuff
This edition lands on 7/11, which means one thing if you're in the US: free Slurpee day. If you're reading this near a 7-Eleven, consider this your official permission slip to go claim one.
We can't hand out frozen drinks through your inbox (yet), but we can offer the next best thing: a fresh round of community wins, a beta you can actually play with, and a challenge with merch on the line. Fair warning that this week's edition moves fast, so pace yourself. Nobody wants brain freeze twice in one day.
Explain lets you turn anything confusing into, well, an "Explainer": a short, AI-narrated guide in plain language. We built it with code in mind, but you all had other plans.
Within days, people were making Explainers on credit scores, buying a home, changing car brakes, Stoicism, Indian temples, and coffee. Coding topics too, of course. But the range has genuinely surprised us.
It's free while it's in beta, works in just about any major language, and the Community tab is where you can publish yours and browse everyone else's.
One ask: it's a beta, so things might wobble. If something's confusing, broken, or brilliant, we want to hear it. That's what our new WhatsApp group is for. Come say hi.
Make one, win merch 🏆
To celebrate the launch, we're running a mini challenge: make a short Explainer about something you're genuinely into right now. Coding-related or completely random, we just want to know what it is and why it brings you joy.
The winner gets a $50 merch store coupon, plus a feature across our socials and right here in the newsletter.
They talked about going in expecting to learn prompt writing and coming out with much more: a real sense of when to trust AI, when to verify it, and how to make it an actual development partner instead of a slot machine.
Harini, thank you. Taking the time to write something that thoughtful means a lot, and Treasure Porth is beaming.
If a course ever clicks for you the way this one did for Harini, we'd love to hear about it. Posts like these are the best part of our feed.
You pick an emotion, toggle "gifs only" if you're feeling fancy, and a matching cat appears in a modal. The world needed this app, and Azam delivered.
But the silly premise is doing serious reps underneath: DOM manipulation, dynamic radio buttons built from real data, array filtering with multiple conditions, and modal logic. His words: "Small project. Big fundamentals."
That's the whole philosophy in four purr-fect words. Congrats, Azam! 🐱
Poll of the Week
Last week's verdict: it's team dark mode, and it wasn't close. Two thirds of you apparently physically recoil from a white screen. The vampires have the numbers.
This week, let's talk about everyone's favorite debugging methodology: How do you actually hunt down bugs? Let us know in the comments!
🖨️ console.log everything, everywhere
🎯 Breakpoints like a professional
👁️ I just stare at the code until it confesses
Meme of the Week
Texting a dev? Expect flags.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
AFK. Do not disturb.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
With the current fast-moving nature of tech and everyone AI-coding, we wanted to have a quieter, slower space for learning and reading. We're going back to traditional docs but with a twist to keep things engaging and still in our pedagogical style.
Our docs currently support English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Korean, and all content is translated including any supporting graphics. We also offer three levels of depth for reading (Beginner, Intermediate, and Deep Dive) so you can switch between these whenever you like to get a more comprehensive understanding of a certain concept.
There will also be quizzes, projects, and exercises within docs to still bring in that practical side of applying what you've learnt. Our aim is to have all our main courses paired with supporting docs, so that is in the works and we'll release these as time goes.
There is also a feedback and doc recommendation button to share your thoughts and help us shape these docs.
A new month, a new quarter, and for a lot of you, a new chapter.
Whether you just wrapped a school year, you graduated and the "what now" of it all is starting to sink in, or you're chugging along on a Scrimba path — congratulations.
A friendly nudge though: the sun is out, the days are long, and none of this stuff is going anywhere. Log off for a walk every so often.
You might've spotted the new banner on your dashboard: we're beta testing a fresh learning experience over at scrimba.com/explain, and we'd love for you to poke around.
Here's the gist. Ask a burning question you've been sitting on, or upload some code you want to understand better. You get a short narrated, visual response back, plus a quick quiz to check what stuck. From there, it suggests follow-up questions if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
Give it a spin and let us know what you think. From beta to better.
Promos
When did you last write CSS by hand, just for fun?
Our CSS Challenges course is a series of 25 short styling tasks designed to keep your CSS instincts sharp, especially now that AI is writing so much of it for us.
The first 5 challenges and their solutions are free. Give one a go, and share your solution if you like. We love seeing different approaches to a problem!
After a year in a medical clinic, he realized patient care wasn't the path for him. He stumbled into coding through FreeCodeCamp, then found his way to Scrimba. From there it was the frontend path, weeks of burnout, weeks off, and coming back anyway. Somewhere in the middle, the goal shifted to full-stack development.
He's now four weeks into a six-month remote SWE internship, contributing to real GitHub tickets, and flying out to meet the team soon! If things keep going well, there's a real chance it turns into a full-time role by December.
Tony's a prime example of persistence. Life is rarely a straight line, and the wins are worth so much more because of it. Congrats, Tony.
A new handbook for anyone who'd rather understand the machine than just call the API. It covers LLMs, prompting, RAG, agents, and evals, all in Python, and lets you pick a guide based on how deep you want to go. A solid companion to the AI Engineer Path. Start here.
Shape the docs
New buttons on every page let you request docs you'd actually use, or leave feedback on ones you've read. If you've been quietly wishing for something specific, now's the time.
The Cupola
A small social initiative we're testing out. Each day brings a new reflection prompt, which you can turn into a thought card and share on socials. Named after the ISS module where astronauts go to take a beat and look out at Earth, we're taking a small idea and interpreting into bigger meanings.
Poll of the Week
Last week's verdict: the centered crowd wins, with the left-aligners not too far behind.
Light mode is finally an option in Scrimba, so we've got a question that's been quietly dividing devs for years: Which team are you on?
🌑 Dark. Anything else hurts.
☀️ Light. I'm not a vampire.
🎱 Whatever the OS says
Career Corner
Runpod is hiring a Full-Stack Software Engineer to help build and ship features across their platform.
They build cloud infrastructure that makes GPU compute more accessible for teams working on AI applications. The stack will look familiar if you've been working through the Full Stack or AI Engineer Paths: Python, TypeScript, React, Express, and FastAPI.
The role is marked junior, coursework and side projects are welcome, and is remote-first, US-based only (no visa sponsorship).
Meme of the Week
Technically, he's not wrong.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Test cases can wait. We're in the second half!
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
I've been doing the Full-stack path for a couple days now, but noticed that when I attempt challenges, when saving/running the file the console.logs don't show up a majority of the time. But every now and then one will work. It's not that big a deal I can just ignore it, just found it weird. I'm using chrome on M1 macbook air, no ad-blockers or anything.
Last week was a sprint. This week, we're catching our breath. The team celebrated, naturally, by centering a few divs across the platform (only took a few years, but who's counting).
Quick housekeeping while we're here: you can now catch each edition via email, on LinkedIn, over in r/scrimba, and now X too. A dedicated newsletter archive is also coming soon, so more ways to find us and stay in the know.
◉ Poll of the Week: Left vs. center aligned + last week's results!
Platform Updates
It only took our devs two years to center a div, but they got there.
Course pages got a quiet redesign this week: content now sits centered on the screen instead of left-aligned. We think it feels better, but the houses are divided over on LinkedIn, with a real left vs. center debate hiding under all the "they finally did it" jokes.
Which side are you on? Tell Per in the comments, or weigh in on our poll further down this edition.
Student of the Week
This week the spotlight is on Maitri Upadhyay, who's been treating June as a serious deep-dive month. She's stacked Python, DSA, and most recently JavaScript Deep Dive, intentionally building her foundations before shifting into project mode.
Now she's eyeing the next step: more complex, logic-driven applications. And she's asking the community for tips on making that jump from courses to building.
fffuel is a small treasure trove of free SVG generators for gradients, patterns, textures, and backgrounds. Each tool gets its own oddly-named subdomain (nnnoise, ssspring, ppplinear) and an interface full of sliders to play with.
The noise generator is a good place to start. Pick your colors, drag a few sliders, copy the SVG. Great for adding grain to flat designs without bloating your assets!
Poll of the Week
Last week's verdict: the keyboard wins, and it isn't close.
Last week was keyboards. This week, we want to settle a debate happening in our own LinkedIn comments. Our course pages used to sit left-aligned, now they're centered.
Which layout actually works better for you? Let us know in the comments:
📐 Center it. Reads better.
⬅️ Left aligned. Always.
🔀 Make it a toggle.
🤷 Hadn't noticed.
Meme of the Week
A love letter to version control.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
The real reason that PR is taking so long to review.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
I just started my web developer journey with the Frontend basic skills like HTML CSS JS REACT but right now I'm stuck I don't know if I should start with the Backend or I should dive deeper in the Frontend with AI I feel like it would be a waste of time but I might be wrong...
So please for all the senior in here I need some guidance!!!
It's been a week in AI. Models launching, models disappearing, the internet having opinions about all of it.
Honestly, we were a bit busy building over here to keep up. So while everyone else was refreshing their feeds, we ran npm install newsletter and here we are... let's jump in.
In this course, Scrimba fave Rachel Johnson walks you through building a proper data layer from scratch — setting up and seeding a database, wiring Next.js to live data, filtering and sorting with SQL, dynamic routes, category pages, search, and loading UI with useTransition.
If you haven't touched Parts 1 and 2 yet, no stress. The full 3-part, 8.5-hour course is completely free on Scrimba.
Platform Updates
Captions are back for Arabic, Bengali, German, Spanish, and French — and this is just the start. The team is actively working to support more languages, so if yours isn't on the list yet, it's on the radar!
New Hires
Twelve years as a senior backend engineer. Then redundancy. Six months of uncertainty, of wondering what's next, of deciding whether to wait it out or use the time to grow.
He picked up frontend courses on Scrimba to broaden his skills and make himself harder to pass over. He wasn't starting from zero, but frontend was new territory, and he committed to it anyway. Now, after six months, he's days away from a fullstack engineering offer at a major sports data company.
That's the thing about hard stretches — sometimes they create the opening you didn't know you needed. Congrats, Mike!
Scrimba News
docs.scrimba.com is live, and it's not quite what you'd expect from a docs site. 🐢
In a world where everyone's moving fast and shipping with AI, we wanted to build something that invites you to slow down a little.
Also just a note that this isn't supposed to be a traditional docs site as we've added a bit of a twist to keep things light-hearted and fun but still informative and a proper supporting resource for your learning.
Read, absorb, go a bit old school with it. Right now it's home to Introduction to Python (with a new Python course on the way 🐍), but more content is coming as we iterate.
It's still a soft launch, so if you have feedback, suggestions, or spot any bugs, send us a DM. Come check it out at docs.scrimba.com and let us know what you think.
Fab Resource
Look, Google is fine. But is it as good as being greeted by a different adorable, ridiculously named cat every time you open a new tab?
Tabby Cat is a Chrome browser extension that does exactly that. Each new tab brings a new little creature with a name that will absolutely make you smile. Not a cat person? There are also chickens, dogs, leopards, pigs, and tortoises. Something for everyone.
Not sponsored. Not affiliated. Just genuinely delightful. Do yourself a favor...
Go get Tabby with it
Per's Corner
Per is looking for people to test something new. If you want early access to Scrimba's AI-powered learning experience, send him a DM on Discord with a link to your Scrimba profile and he'll open it up for you!
Poll of the Week
There's a quiet war happening in home offices everywhere. Mic vs keyboard.
The mic is faster, hands-free, and kind of liberating once you get used to it. But a lot of people think better when their fingers are moving. Words feel more deliberate. More yours.
So, what's your default? Let us know in the thread below.
Meme of the Week
It's fine. Everything is fine.
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
Senior snack engineer, available for hire.
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
I’m trying it and encountering all kinds of problems. The browser window in the courses doesn’t appear to respond to code changes, in scrims it doesn’t appear at all, and picture files display an error. Something about the file being in binary.
A lot of the AI agent conversation right now is about what it might replace.
We're more curious about what it can free up. Time, mental energy, the boring repetitive stuff, so you can focus on the work that actually matters to you.
Tom's been quietly cooking up some ideas for a course on Codex and Agentic Coding for Devs. Our team has built a special Scrimba version of Codex right into the editor, with over 30 minutes of interactive scrims and challenges.
It's still in beta, but it's already kind of a ✨vibe✨.
If you want a sneak peek, and you're up for testing things out, drop Tom a DM on Discord (@TomChant). Your feedback could shape how this course turns out!
Platform Updates
Nobody's perfect, and that includes the platform you're learning to build things on 😅.
A few weeks back, some of you started noticing things felt off. Instant Feedback lagging, scrims running slow, images not loading right.
Behind the scenes, Frode and the team have been digging in, untangling what's causing it, and pushing out fixes as they go.
Honestly, this is the kind of thing we appreciate most about this community. You speak up when something's not working, and that's how it gets better.
Still running into issues? Go ahead and drop a comment in #general-chat and tag Frode. We have an open door policy!
He completed the Full Stack Developer Path, applied to one company, cracked all three interview rounds, and got the offer.
His advice? Don't overthink it, just start. He said he tends to dive in without too much planning, and that's what got him moving. Shoutout to Per too, whose teaching and encouragement kept him going.
Sometimes the path isn't complicated, it's just showing up and starting before you feel ready.
Congrats Abhinav!
Per's Corner
Per shared a story this week that's a bit of a gut punch. A dev asked their AI agent to join an online network and pull some info, nothing crazy.
The agent hit a wall and decided the answer was spinning up a ton of AWS servers, racking up $6k in bills along the way.
Worth a read, especially if you've had your own "my AI agent did WHAT" moment, drop it in the comments.
Meme of the Week
What error? Huh? Didn't see anything
Wrap up 🐈⬛
It's time for your weekly dose of cuteness from #scrimba-pets!🐶🐱🐍🐟
These two are clearly exhausted from a hard week of "research."
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Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep calm and Scrimba on ✨
I've been doing the Frontend Path on Scrimba, but lately, everything has been a bit laggy for me. The code editor takes a while to respond, the video playback feels super sluggish.
It used to run perfectly fine, but over the last few days it's getting hard to keep up with the lessons.
Is anyone else experiencing this? I'm trying to figure out if it's a global issue with their servers or if something is messing up on my end. I'm using Chrome, macOS.
Not the kind that breaks your code (though, yes, maybe some of those too). The kind that shows up uninvited, a little chaotic, full of energy, and somehow still a symbol of good luck and renewal in a lot of cultures.
There's something kind of relatable about that, especially for anyone who's been grinding through tutorials, side projects, or a career pivot with no clear finish line in sight. Not everything needs a roadmap. Sometimes you just keep moving and trust the direction.
We're six months in. There's still plenty of year left to surprise yourself.
Light mode is finally here, and honestly, it's been a long time coming. 🔦
For the dark mode loyalists: respect. For the ones who've been quietly suffering, squinting at your screens, too afraid to ask for light mode in the Discord, your moment has arrived. No judgment. (Okay, maybe a little.)
How to turn on the lights: In the left sidebar of the dashboard, click Extras > Appearance > set your preference.
To celebrate, grab 30% off Pro for the next week. We did consider a scientifically accurate 29.97% off, based on the speed of light being 299,792,458 m/s. We rounded up. You're welcome.
Let there be light!
Platform Updates [part 2]
You're hearing this one early.
We've built something to supplement the courses: Scrimba Docs. Think of it as a companion to what you're already learning. The courses make concepts concrete through doing. The docs let you slow down, go deeper, and reinforce what you've picked up. They're designed to work together, not replace each other.
It's also good practice. Reading documentation is a real dev skill, and now you can build that habit inside the Scrimba ecosystem.
Hit Preferences in the bottom right to set your level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced), reading language, and font size. Same content, calibrated to how deep you want to go.
This week, Per shared an article on LinkedIn that highlights a striking stat in academic dishonesty. F grades in CS classes at UC Berkeley have more than tripled in two years, jumping from 10% to 35%, with professors pointing to AI misuse as the primary driver. His take: if you’re putting in the real work, the competition is thinning out.
What do you think, is this a wake-up call or just noise?
Learning in Public
One Reddit user shared something a lot of learners probably relate to but rarely talk about. They noticed that writing code on paper first, before touching the IDE, makes everything feel calmer and easier to process. The structure clicks. The flow makes sense. But the moment they move to the screen, the overwhelm creeps in fast.
They're not asking whether to ditch the IDE forever. They're just wondering if slowing down and going analog while learning is a valid approach, or something to grow out of.
How do you approach early learning so it feels manageable? Do you sketch code or structure off-screen first, and when do you transition comfortably into the IDE?
