Musician turned Programmer turned Musician

ThePrimeagen rediscovers music after 16 years by programming beats in Strudel.js via Neovim and Playwright.

• Prime learned programming in 1999 from a level editor inside a game called Grail, not from school.
• Played guitar seriously for ~10 years; quit music in 2010 after watching The Social Network.
• Strudel is a JavaScript live-coding music tool that runs entirely in the browser with instant audio feedback.
• To avoid coding in a browser editor, Prime routed Neovim → curl → Bun server → Playwright → Strudel.
• Built a custom DSL so one Neovim file could import and push patterns to Strudel on save.
• Strudel’s mini-notation supports rests and subgroupings; wrapping with carets plays each subgroup per cycle.
• Layered high hat, bass drum, bassline, reverb, low-pass filter, supersaw, and sine-wave-shaped delay into a full track.

2025-07-20 · Watch on YouTube