📜 Project History
Lightcodepedia has three generations. Only the third is the current platform.
| Generation | Stack | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Karmicsoft origins | YAML-driven app definitions | Historical inspiration |
| 2. Erasmus+ / Streamlit era | Streamlit Cloud, server-side Python | Ended — architecture retired |
| 3. Serverless platform | GitHub Pages + Jekyll + browser-side everything | Active |
1. Karmicsoft origins
The conceptual ancestor of today’s declarative blocks: the idea that an application can be declared in plain text rather than programmed. That YAML-driven philosophy is the one continuous thread running from the first generation through to today’s IAL and YAML component blocks.
2. The Erasmus+ / Streamlit era
A server-based platform built on Streamlit Cloud, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union (Project Nr. 2022-1-FR01-KA220-HED-00086863). This generation established the pedagogical mission and the community of educators around it. The funding period has since closed and the architecture has been retired.
Why the server-based approach was abandoned:
- It required a running server process — a cost, a dependency, a single point of failure
- Stateful sessions don’t fork: an educator couldn’t clone the platform in minutes
- Server-side Python meant contributors had to understand deployment, not just Markdown
3. The serverless platform (current)
A sister of the Erasmus branch, not its continuation: it shares the
repository and the pedagogical mission, but no code. Everything runs in the
visitor’s browser — Python via Micropython, interactivity via the component
runtime — on a static GitHub Pages site. All state is client-side or flat
files committed to main.
No server, no cost to scale, forkable in minutes: each fork is a LightNode, owned by an educator.