asciiquarium: Cheaper and cleaner than the real thing

By all rights, I should hate programs that don’t really do anything.

After all, I tend to be tough on software, and the slightest deficit is grounds for dismissal. With extreme prejudice.

So something like asciiquarium should be a complete no-brainer.

After all, there’s no real function to asciiquarium. It has no options that I could find, no tweaks to apply. And only three controls: quit, redraw and pause.

It’s fire-and-forget software, in a manner of speaking.

But it’s a classic. It’s well done, it’s comical, it uses terminal space cleanly and comes with enough subtle surprises to keep you watching for a while.

What can you do with it? Nothing, technically. But sometimes doing nothing just looks like nothing. 😉