[HN Gopher] VS Code Pets
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VS Code Pets
Author : vortex_ape
Score : 502 points
Date : 2025-01-18 18:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| behnamoh wrote:
| Sadly they only appear in the right/left hand side, not the
| editor :( I want a cat that reacts to my code, ideally getting
| mad at me for writing poor quality code, and stretching/sleeping
| when I'm thinking.
| baal80spam wrote:
| > a cat that reacts to my code, ideally getting mad at me for
| writing poor quality code, and stretching/sleeping when I'm
| thinking
|
| This... this needs to happen!
| entropie wrote:
| Yes nice, a dog could express its opinion by peeing on the
| lines of code
| Frotag wrote:
| Triggering an animation based on what's under the cursor sounds
| interesting. Like moving to a loop declaration starts a chase-
| your-tail animation. Or moving to a function signature gives
| the pet some paint and paper.
| LordShredda wrote:
| A cat that spins around in circles if it detects a function
| results in an infinite loop?
| yreg wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oo-ee-a-e-a-cat-remixes
| bitwize wrote:
| Yes, because cats have solved the halting problem, and
| whether P=NP. They're just not telling us.
| matsemann wrote:
| I got "power mode" (or something similar) installed in
| Intellij/Jetbrains IDE. The faster I write or bigger change I
| make the more sparkles and flames etc grow around the cursor.
| Similar plug-ins exist for other editors as well. A bit fun to
| enable before pairing with a coworker to see their reaction.
| firejake308 wrote:
| Google Colab has this setting, too
| cluckindan wrote:
| Make it chase the text cursor and get confused by multi-cursor
| bitwize wrote:
| Atom could have them in the editor. But one of the wins for VS
| Code was better security isolation for plugins.
|
| Maybe Microsoft could bring back the Bob team to integrate pets
| with all facets of VS Code.
| parpfish wrote:
| It could enforce 80 char line width limits by batting stray
| characters "of the ledge" to watch them fall
| helsinki wrote:
| Let's get them in Neovim and call them Neopets.
| dailykoder wrote:
| Yes, but only if they run in javascript. We need more
| javascript.
| gertlex wrote:
| Do you mean Flash?
| _ache_ wrote:
| It already exists for neovim.
|
| https://github.com/giusgad/pets.nvim
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's adorable, first time I've had my wife engage with what I'm
| writing. Any way to make them larger? They're so tiny on high
| resolution screens.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Ideally they would grow as time goes on :)
| moffkalast wrote:
| Then you might eventually need to buy an extra monitor just
| for the cat.
| behnamoh wrote:
| All the more reason to justify extra monitors!
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Yes, the settings allow you to change the size of them!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Ah, there it is. Thanks!
| TuringNYC wrote:
| So basically, Clippy?
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant)
|
| https://steve-lovelace.com/the-ghosts-of-microsoft-bob/
| notnmeyer wrote:
| clippy is one of the pets and mentioned at the top of the
| readme
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| My I also mention the Nyancat Progress bar for Jetbrains IDEs?
| https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8575-nyan-progress-bar
| hurflmurfl wrote:
| This is actually the first plugin I install on every new
| installation of a Jetbrains IDE... Used to include it in my
| "mentoring about advantages of IDEs" rants, just before
| configuring debugger.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| It's almost like Sheep.exe, but not quite there yet!
| hoyd wrote:
| Reminded me of that too.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Can my pet subtly react to the state of my workspace? If there's
| errors and warnings, or if various events happen.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Hmmm. Given the state of your code we would also need to
| incorporate a VS Code Veterinary Hospital and I'm not sure you
| can afford the insurance premiums.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| [obviously I know nothing about the state of your code which
| I am sure is very good and so this should simply be
| understood as me being 'amusingly' mean!]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The state of some of my projects? I'd be convicted of animal
| cruelty.
| aleden wrote:
| Yes! This is along the lines of what I thought of when I saw
| ghostty.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524537
|
| It's too bad I don't use vscode. I think it would be cool to have
| something that can jump between terminal emulators, something
| that isn't shackled to a text editor.
|
| EDIT: I seem to vaguely remember something similar to this
| concept from some anime I watched that depicted a "hacker". It
| might have been serial experiments lain, or cowboy bebop..
| krish98sai wrote:
| This is like Google Colab's corgi mode:
| https://x.com/GoogleColab/status/1116487177364365313
| ack210 wrote:
| Posthog built something similar too, a hedgehog you can move
| around and that interacts with some of the elements on the
| page: https://posthog.com/blog/rome-hackathon#hedgehog-mode
| vunderba wrote:
| Now integrate them with your linter of choice, so the pet's
| attitude reflects the current state of your code.
| Bloomy22 wrote:
| This has reminded me of an anecdote. I work on a corporate social
| network. One day a colleague from the parent company comes to us
| scared because instead of seeing the people photos and the
| attached images, he saw strange images. As in the past we had
| some scare with xss reflected, we immediately got scared and went
| straight to investigate the matter. It turned out that the
| colleague had a Firefox extension installed that changed his
| images for Nicholas Cage's faces. He didn't remember having done
| it, but we did remember his blunder hahaha
| greazy wrote:
| That's hilarious. Sounds like someone was pranking your
| colleague.
|
| Was this the extension? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/niccage/
| Bloomy22 wrote:
| Yes, it was that one!
| sam_bristow wrote:
| Damn, I was half hoping it was doing some deepfake face
| swapping rather than just totally replacing the whole image.
| Part of me would love to install a "Being John Malkovich"
| style face replacement plugin onto someone's machine.
| mocamoca wrote:
| At university, we used this extension to teach our classmates
| about good security practices, such as locking their computers
| when left unattended. It was fun, especially when professors
| didn't lock their computers. And my former classmates did learn
| to lock their computers :)
| iterateoften wrote:
| violating security policies in order to "teach a lesson" is a
| sure fire way to get people to lose trust in you.
|
| Accessing someone's computer and manipulating the software
| was instant termination at my old company. Some new security
| guy joined and tried to do what you did. Find unlocked
| computers and mess with them to prove a point. He lasted a
| week.
| userbinator wrote:
| Ironic, given that a ton of the security dogma these days
| is "don't trust anyone" --- you can guess why that started
| happening; precisely because of people like him.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| It all depends on the company of course.
|
| I worked at a place where if you left your laptop unlocked,
| anyone could use your slack account to announce you were
| buying breakfast for the team tomorrow. That was more
| effective than any training video they could have made us
| watch. But I obviously wouldn't do something like that as a
| lone wolf.
| maeil wrote:
| Similar here at a big company that placed a lot of
| emphasis on opsec. It worked.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > to announce you were buying breakfast for the team
| tomorrow
|
| Where I used to work the thing was to reply-all to emails
| simply saying "I love you very much".
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm of two minds about it. I agree that these days it's by
| far the safer choice to steer clear of such antics.
|
| But I do sort of miss the days when we had a little more
| fun with computers even at work. Twenty years ago it was
| pretty ubiquitous to get a goofy desktop background if you
| left your machine unsecured all the time and I never saw
| any harm come from it.
|
| Times change I suppose.
| ireadmevs wrote:
| Good times when I used to do a screenshot with notepad
| window open and use that as their new background
| wallpaper
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is definitely a better CYA move to just have a policy
| that nobody touches the unlocked computers, but is it
| actually more effective? If the company mostly employs
| adults that can be trusted to keep their pranks
| reasonable, it seems like a good way of self-policing.
|
| If calling out somebody's unlocked computer gets them
| punished for real, nobody will call out their friends...
| Volundr wrote:
| It depends on the company and probably even the team. At
| least when I was running an IT team I generally viewed a
| colleague doing something like this as more effective than
| me nagging some sysadmin about them leaving their computer
| unlocked. Would have never tolerated someone on my team
| doing it to someone outside the team though.
| albert_e wrote:
| Yeah I lean on this side - avoid doing pranks and other
| practical jokes.
|
| When there is any actual malware or security incident, you
| don't want your colleagues to think of you and go "Maybe
| this is just Dave pulling one of his clever pranks".
| cyberax wrote:
| At Amazon there was a "unicorn game". If you find an
| unlocked computer, you could send "I love Unicorns" message
| using the credentials of the logged on person.
|
| There was even an internal site with the unicorn image.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| There is a time and place for everything--and you should
| not assume a business environment is the only possible
| setting in which colleagues might pass by unattended
| workstations.
|
| Ideally the prank is pulled in a high-trust, low-stakes
| environment like a college campus or high school computer
| lab, _before_ corporate policies are part of one 's life.
|
| It is also a rich tradition, from the days of yore, before
| robust security practices became standard:
|
| * http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/baggy-pantsing.html
|
| * http://catb.org/jargon/html/D/derf.html
|
| * https://www.multicians.org/cookie.html
|
| I would much rather my colleagues be taught this lesson
| (even if just through a verbal reprimand) than work with
| someone who is allowed to remain ignorant of the risks of
| their behaviour.
| Sammi wrote:
| Man if you can't trust the guy sitting next to you to
| pull this prank on you, then you've got serious issues.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| At the same time, a new hire could actually be a
| pentester, investigator, or corporate espionage actor. I
| know people who's job this was to take over employee
| computers while the target went to lunch
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Accessing someone's computer and manipulating the
| software was instant termination at my old company. Some
| new security guy joined and tried to do what you did. Find
| unlocked computers and mess with them to prove a point. He
| lasted a week.
|
| That's a very strange policy to apply to your _security
| team_. They have good reason to make a point about leaving
| your workstation unsecured.
|
| Working for NCC Group, the expectation was that if you left
| your computer unsecured, something would happen to it, and
| you, not the person who followed office policy by
| highlighting your mistake, would look bad.
| mosselman wrote:
| It sounds like this guy came out on top in this, he found
| out really quickly that he joined a shit company.
| darkwater wrote:
| What a sad company you worked for
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I guess it's a company cultural thing. In one past company,
| the SECURITY guys were the ones to do this to us teach us a
| lesson.but rather than a panic screen, it was porn.
|
| To this day a few milliseconds before I stand up I wiggle
| my mouse to lock the screen. Muscle memory because lessons
| were learned
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| At my office it was either a picture of a shirtless David
| Hasselhoff as your desktop background, or an email sent
| to the networking+devs list announcing that you were
| giving away $20 bills at your desk, lol.
| arccy wrote:
| There's definitely a difference in company culture. One
| place I worked at you'd shout donuts into the office chat
| from your coworker's unattended laptops (and they'd be on
| the hook to bring in donuts or equivalent).
|
| Always easy to catch the people who usually work from home.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Oh, we do that with croissants here!
| LandR wrote:
| One jnr dev at a place I worked left his desktop unlocked
| and a very elaborate email about his love for my little
| pony and wanting to start a company my little pony fan
| club was sent from his account to whole company lol.
| goguy wrote:
| We used to send an email from their account saying
| lunch/donuts are on me!
| pjerem wrote:
| A pretty good one is https://fakeupdate.net
|
| I once pranked a coworker/friend with a Windows installation
| screen after lunch break. He was ... astounded. The thing is,
| we were all using Debian in this company.
| saghm wrote:
| A roommate of mine in college used to leave his laptop
| unlocked all the time, and I found an app that would put an
| overlay on the screen that looked like a kernel panic. This
| went on for months, and he became convinced that his laptop
| had some issue where it would panic if he left it idle for
| too long. One day he happened to be going through his apps
| folder, and he saw something with a name like "iPanic.app",
| and watching his dawning comprehension as he realized what
| just must have been going on was probably the satisfying
| conclusion to a prank I've ever experienced.
| Arech wrote:
| this is a gem, thanks for sharing!
| veunes wrote:
| Some IT departments spend years trying to drill "Lock your
| computer!" into people's heads yet you need just really
| simple solution!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| We used to set the desktop wallpaper to David Hasselhoff.
| nunez wrote:
| Stuff of legends.
| fooker wrote:
| Here's anecdote from Google's glory days! We had a similar
| extension, with Larry Page instead of Nicholas Cage. And anyone
| leaving their computer unlocked were subject do it.
|
| This became widespread enough to be mentioned at the new
| employee orientation.
| veunes wrote:
| I love that kind of tech workplace comedy
| ltr_ wrote:
| I remember one of the students in our school replaced the
| Windows 95 startup logo with the goatse.cx picture of every
| computer of a new lab, the rector of the moment called an
| emergency gathering in the gym BEGGING the students to change
| it back . promising that there would be no repercussions, he
| was sweating blood, because authorities picked our school to
| inaugurate the computer national program that made the lab
| possible, the next day. nobody talked, they had to change the
| inauguration to another school, fun times.
| iamthejuan wrote:
| It is the logo.sys which is actually a bitmap file if I
| remember it correctly.
| creaktive wrote:
| Snitch :)
| gryfft wrote:
| Brings back memories of bricking the family PC way back
| before I knew what a bootloader or filesystem was. Good
| times.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| At a company selling a B2B platform, we had an internal
| extension used to teach how to write extensions that drew an
| interactive pet on screen, similar to the one in this VS Code
| extension. It accidentally got deployed to one client, which
| caused a complete company shutdown because lots of people
| suddenly reported being hit by a virus to their internal IT
| team, causing company-wide panic.
|
| I'm not sure what the lesson here is.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| At my company this happened once across all our internal tools.
| It was a joke inside one department that accidentally got
| pushed comapny wide
| taikon wrote:
| https://github.com/giusgad/pets.nvim
| vunderba wrote:
| I love goofy stuff like this - it kind of reminds me of FL Chan,
| a built-in effects plugin for FL Studio who dances in sync with
| the music.
|
| https://youtu.be/v4hPIDfS3qI?t=51
| johnisgood wrote:
| How does it boost productivity? I feel like it is a distraction.
| cr125rider wrote:
| The readme is using what is called "sarcasm"
| veunes wrote:
| Brief interactions with your "pet" encourage you to take small
| mental breaks. For me it can be a big boost of productivity
| johnisgood wrote:
| Uninvited, randomly forced small mental breaks is disruptive
| for me.
|
| That said, I have a real pet, when I get the feeling to play
| with it, I do so, and it helps my mind to come up with a
| solution while I'm not consciously thinking about it. I often
| came up with great ideas while I was talking to my girlfriend
| as well, essentially when I wasn't actively focusing on the
| issue.
| imgabe wrote:
| Reminds me of BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
| nunez wrote:
| Much less nefarious...I hope.
| joshuaturner wrote:
| Neko is back
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)
| beala wrote:
| eSheep was my favorite. Apparently someone is keeping the dream
| alive: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mx2v0tqt6rm?hl=en-
| US&gl=U...
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Thank you for the link! This is their GitHub repo if anyone
| is curious: https://github.com/Adrianotiger/desktopPet (I
| couldn't find the license info though).
| fredzel wrote:
| For anime connoisseurs there is Desktop Mate, suprisingly easy to
| mod and use your own (or found in the Internet) character models
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3301060/Desktop_Mate/
| snarfy wrote:
| Seeing this reminded me of power mode.
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hoovercj...
| roskelld wrote:
| Tiny Elvis next?
|
| I want to hear how huge my code is.
|
| https://archive.org/details/win3_TELV150
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I would like to be able to feed my pets, ideally feeding them
| obsolete parts of my code.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| "Your pet feed on comments so be aware of that!"
| phaedryx wrote:
| Would that make them sick?
| _ink_ wrote:
| Finally, I can claim the dog ate my merge request, when being
| asked what's taking so long?
| puffybunion wrote:
| This is such a great idea. Very original, at least as far as I'm
| aware. Kinda nice to see something like this in today's cynical
| world.
| skirmish wrote:
| > Very original
|
| Not really: both Google's internal VS Code based IDE and Colab
| have various background pets as an option: [1]. I am pretty
| sure the developer saw them.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Incorgnito/comments/195savi/corgi_m...
| taspeotis wrote:
| It's gotta be heavily inspired by Pixel Pals
| mkl wrote:
| Not original. Things like this go back at least to the 1980s.
|
| Some I ran ~30 years ago:
|
| Neko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)
|
| Sheep: https://adrianotiger.github.io/desktopPet/
|
| There were even things like this for text mode DOS. I had one
| that was smiley faces moving around eating letters.
| hackerknew wrote:
| I love how the description ends "to boost productivity."
| johnisgood wrote:
| Me too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42752276
| m3kw9 wrote:
| More distraction are welcome
| corank wrote:
| Is there evidence showing that such things do boost productivity?
| Or any research on how they affect the way people work?
| bvan wrote:
| Seriously?
| grimgrin wrote:
| yes bvan, but i think we should fork it and use alf
|
| https://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/83012/
| shakna wrote:
| Random thought... What if you could link pets to visibility of a
| variable? If the variable is in scope, a certain pet appears. You
| get both cute, and something to tickle your brain with
| familiarity.
| bulatb wrote:
| That unholy petvar symbiosis owns the codebase like a cat owns
| your house. The program and the company are now in service of
| minTaxRateOffsetTemp.
| tempodox wrote:
| What a cute idea. As long as it's not a tamagotchi :)
| veunes wrote:
| On the contrary, I think it would be cool! A little distraction
| to feed a thing
| deadbabe wrote:
| Any way to get them to die if you don't get work done? Would be
| pretty motivating.
| matt3210 wrote:
| Make one that has anime girls sitting on panels. Classic window
| sitters!
| veunes wrote:
| Really cute and charming! And beyond the fun factor, I can see
| something like this subtly boosting morale.
| elcapitan wrote:
| I imagine software archaeologists of the future will use this
| prominently to explain why developers have been replaced with AI.
| /s
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Ok... this should be like tamagotchi - but if the more errors you
| have the closer it is to dying, and you feed it by taking breaks
| often i.e. coding for too long in one sitting and it starts dying
| incentivising you to take breaks!
| DrBazza wrote:
| Next evolution of this will be MS Agents. We will finally see the
| return of Peedy, Merlin, Genie, and Robby.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent
| dankons wrote:
| I need Links back in my life :(
| sen wrote:
| I've have this installed for years, and actually find it useful.
| It's my version of "rubber duck programming", where when I'm
| thinking through something I sit there throwing balls to the
| little puppy while my brain crunches away.
| esaym wrote:
| Would be cooler if it walked around the whole screen and not just
| stuck in a dedicated panel.
| landsman wrote:
| Adopt dog in shelter and get a life.
| e-master wrote:
| On a slightly unrelated note, I am absolutely thrilled about
| tonybaloney's other project[1] that automatically generates C#
| bindings for python. Can't wait for it to support complete class
| mappings and finally I will be able to use python 'type-safely'.
|
| [1] https://github.com/tonybaloney/CSnakes
| mouse_ wrote:
| when he started climbing the overview pane I screamed
| mahdihabibi wrote:
| This reminds me of Bisqwit's text editor
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nlNQcKsj74&ab_channel=Bisqw...
| He has a super mario running on the bar which is so cool! is
| there a way to bring the pets to vs code bar ? bcz I usually
| close the side panel when I'm writing to a file and I want pets
| to be there when I don't have the side panel open. chat, also
| please let me know if you know any alternative for vim.
| __LINE__ wrote:
| Remind me of this
|
| https://samperson.itch.io/desktop-goose
| mitch-crn wrote:
| I love it! I something like that on my "about page"
| http://crn.hopto.org/about/
|
| Move your mouse around and it will follow you.
| therealfiona wrote:
| This makes me write better code. I use it daily.
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(page generated 2025-01-19 23:01 UTC)