On Programming Joy and Octocat

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While GitHub has been busy losing its last nine of availablility, I’ve been thinking about how the internet used to be.

Not the internet people talk about from the 90s, but the internet that we used to have even 10-15 years ago. This was the heyday of startups like GitHub, Twitter, Airbnb, and, Google was in its prime (though likely slightly past it at that point - Linus’s git tech talk there was in 2007.)

I’ve specifically been thinking about the Octocat Builder. GitHub created it back in those years, hard to say when, but it dates back to at least 2018. The Octocat mascot itself was created in 2006.

The builder is so much fun - you can select different colors of cat, hairstyles, accessories, and send to friends.

There is no reason for this to exist. Perhaps there is some branding cache that GitHub got from this, but really, someone in the company just wanted to exist, and now it does.

Something like this would have a hard time being born in today’s tech industry, I think, with its cycle of promo packets, now layoffs, anxiety about AI, and now older, sclerotic tech companies thinking about how to stay technically and socially relevant. In a world with one nine left and the rest of the app dedicated to the growth of Copilot, there is no room for a small purple Octocat.

There’s some hope: there is a little whimsy in products like Claude Code’s spinner verbs and animations, but mostly it feels like whimsy ended with ZIRP, and that makes me a bit sad. I’m happy that Octocat is still here.

Github on ✰Vicki Boykis✰

On Programming Joy and Octocat