Get the latest tech news

I wrote a screenplay for a programming language introduction

Great: Generating audio from a screenplay made things go much, much faster! A little bad: Writing a keyboard macro to drive a programming environment is a bit tedious and finicky. I wanted to use a real programming language.

I now have the basics of the system I’ve wanted: I can edit a screenplay and have that produce a (hopefully) engaging user experience with dynamic visual and audio components. Are familiar with basic HTML and CSS (JavaScript knowledge is not required) Can use a code editor (doesn’t matter which one) Have some minimal experience running commands in a terminal window Could stay on for months on end Would let my siblings and I easily post short messages to it that would remain visible until replaced Was large enough and easy enough to read without glasses Required no interaction to wake or read and was relatively foolproof (touching it wouldn’t disrupt it) Was resilient to network failures Didn’t glow at nighttime Didn’t require hardware hackery (I’m a software person) Would boot directly into displaying messages (no interaction needed to start an app) Was not enshittified with a subscription service or proprietary app store Was reasonably affordable Would not look out of place in a home

Get the Android app