Hi there. My name is Paul. I’m a developer, an explorer and I’ve got ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed.
This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress.
While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use.
It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now.
So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself.
Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make.
I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough".
I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it.
So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy.
Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head?
So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond.
The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together.
I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.
This is neat. I like the zen background sounds. I'm particularly fascinated by digital third places with extremely limited social interaction (like cursor camp by Neal). I think it has something to do with the impossibility of something like this happening in real life.
That said, I'm not sure how real the "koi you see are other people visiting the pond together with you" bit is. I only ever saw 3 swimming koi. Maybe that's the base.
It appeared to be real earlier, or at least simulated being real. I watched for 10 minutes and there were ~10 koi in my pool, with koi routinely flickering in and out of existence as though they suddenly joined or left. That said, I see three static koi now. Entirely conceivably that HN killed the backend and triggered a failsafe.
Hey! That’s the base, correct. Three are always there so if someone joins and nobody else is using it – they’re never alone.
In essence, when you someone joins the counter goes up and another koi will spawn locally.
It’s a bit nerfed from my initial idea to sync the movement of each koi, but I might do that in the future.
It looks like the way I deployed (Railway) it causes `429 Too Many Requests` to be returned, so I’ll definitely have to look into that. But it’s 1:21 AM so tomorrow.
I noticed the koi pop in and out of existence on visible parts of the screen - it would be nice if incoming koi swam into frame from offscreen, and outgoing koi swam offscreen before disappearing.
Yes, that was very jarring. I didn't bother reading the intro text that said the other fish are other people on the site, so I just thought this was janky crap. The creator shouldn't assume people read anything. I see a button that says "Enter", I click - I'm not reading anything else. So it's going to cause a lot of confusion when I arrive in a pond filled with way too many fish for a zen-like experience, and even more annoyance at the constant flickering in and out.
I really like the UI especially the about page. I don't think you are supposed to be able to see the about page on the playing page (it took a bit to start and then started when I was in about) but it looks good there with the blur.
This is great! The sounds and visuals are a great way to recenter. Only UX thing I’d say, is it would be nice, and less distracting, if other “users/koi” popping in instead kind of faded in. Them suddenly appearing kind of pulls you out of the zen mode.
Awesome idea!
I haven’t tried it on desktop, but it’s running silky smooth for me on iPhone. No lag at all. I see some others complaining of that too so not sure what the issue is.
Looks like it locks the number when you first load. I had it open for 30 minutes, with just 3 fish, but after reading your comment, re-opened to find 3 dozen.
Cool idea but as some others have said the website was running quite slow for me. I noticed it at first when hovering over the 'enter' button (so before even loading the pond) because the hover animation on the button kicked in really late feeling.
Then actually entering took a few seconds and it was quite laggy looking at all the fish.
Once those things are fixed I think the idea is neat. It would be cool to be able to interact with the pond in some way (click lily pads, drop food in the water, click the water to make it splash) but that might not be what you're going for with this
During my work on it I’ve been testing it on both my Linux box as well as my MacBook and haven’t encountered lag. I’m not meaning to say “it works on my machine” by this, but simply that I couldn’t have caught this before.
I will definitely address the lag issue, and find a more “graceful” way for koi to enter and leave the pond.
About interactivity – I was thinking about this both during the development as well as just when I had the idea and the intention was always to not have any, simply because in my own experience we are always doing “something”, and this was a way to get a little bit of the opposite – to do nothing.
But I can see how some micro-interactions could be useful. A sort of a “popping bubblewrap” action.
This is honestly super cool, and a lot of fun. I was about to say something about the koi fish spawning and despawning until I read that they are the other users on the site, which is an awesome mechanic. Is there a way to set this as a screen saver or background?
Super cool, thanks for making this! I've been there with you on the perfectionism. Glad that 'good enough' won this time, and we're all the better for it. Keep going!
Been on a train of thought recently that with AI making web dev so much easier that we should be making more beautiful experiences.
I have always felt ultra minimalism is partly a way of fighting bugs. Why can't we put more effort to make every site a great experience in of itself?
Been experimenting with going way beyond my usual frontend work for something truly special. This made me think if it. It's 10x the effort but that's about the same effort I put in before manually making a minimal one.
Seems like quite laggy (I suppose bcz of heavy assets and rendering). I would have liked it more if we had some interactive elments with the pond or the fishes because I can only stare at it for some seconds lol
This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress.
While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use.
It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now.
So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself.
Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make.
I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough".
I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it.
So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy.
Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head?
So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond.
The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together.
I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.
This is neat. I like the zen background sounds. I'm particularly fascinated by digital third places with extremely limited social interaction (like cursor camp by Neal). I think it has something to do with the impossibility of something like this happening in real life.
That said, I'm not sure how real the "koi you see are other people visiting the pond together with you" bit is. I only ever saw 3 swimming koi. Maybe that's the base.
It appeared to be real earlier, or at least simulated being real. I watched for 10 minutes and there were ~10 koi in my pool, with koi routinely flickering in and out of existence as though they suddenly joined or left. That said, I see three static koi now. Entirely conceivably that HN killed the backend and triggered a failsafe.
lots and lots of koi at the moment!
Hey! That’s the base, correct. Three are always there so if someone joins and nobody else is using it – they’re never alone.
In essence, when you someone joins the counter goes up and another koi will spawn locally.
It’s a bit nerfed from my initial idea to sync the movement of each koi, but I might do that in the future.
It looks like the way I deployed (Railway) it causes `429 Too Many Requests` to be returned, so I’ll definitely have to look into that. But it’s 1:21 AM so tomorrow.
Thank you for letting me know!
I noticed the koi pop in and out of existence on visible parts of the screen - it would be nice if incoming koi swam into frame from offscreen, and outgoing koi swam offscreen before disappearing.
Yes, that was very jarring. I didn't bother reading the intro text that said the other fish are other people on the site, so I just thought this was janky crap. The creator shouldn't assume people read anything. I see a button that says "Enter", I click - I'm not reading anything else. So it's going to cause a lot of confusion when I arrive in a pond filled with way too many fish for a zen-like experience, and even more annoyance at the constant flickering in and out.
I really like the UI especially the about page. I don't think you are supposed to be able to see the about page on the playing page (it took a bit to start and then started when I was in about) but it looks good there with the blur.
Here's a list of other sound/relaxation websites: https://fmhy.net/audio#ambient-relaxation.
This one is pretty funny but not relaxing to me. It may be a covid remnant: https://imisstheoffice.eu/
This is great! The sounds and visuals are a great way to recenter. Only UX thing I’d say, is it would be nice, and less distracting, if other “users/koi” popping in instead kind of faded in. Them suddenly appearing kind of pulls you out of the zen mode. Awesome idea!
thanks! had a really rough day
I do this with the screensavers on the Apple TV device. They’re amazing.
It's running at 3fps or something like that. Is that a me problem or a "lots of traffic" problem?
seems to be a "vibe-code" problem
I haven’t tried it on desktop, but it’s running silky smooth for me on iPhone. No lag at all. I see some others complaining of that too so not sure what the issue is.
Awesome. Top of bookmark list for a daily zen!
Too many koi fish is stressful (and slow)
I'd love a version without the multiplayer and just zen
Looks like it locks the number when you first load. I had it open for 30 minutes, with just 3 fish, but after reading your comment, re-opened to find 3 dozen.
Choice about busyness would be nice.
You might want to prompt ChatGPT to increase the frame rate of the fish animation.
You might want to prompt for some manners, and why humans have them.
weird comment.... this was vibe coded so yes it has terrible performance why wouldn't we want more fps?
Love it
Cool idea but as some others have said the website was running quite slow for me. I noticed it at first when hovering over the 'enter' button (so before even loading the pond) because the hover animation on the button kicked in really late feeling.
Then actually entering took a few seconds and it was quite laggy looking at all the fish.
Once those things are fixed I think the idea is neat. It would be cool to be able to interact with the pond in some way (click lily pads, drop food in the water, click the water to make it splash) but that might not be what you're going for with this
Thank you for the feedback!
During my work on it I’ve been testing it on both my Linux box as well as my MacBook and haven’t encountered lag. I’m not meaning to say “it works on my machine” by this, but simply that I couldn’t have caught this before.
I will definitely address the lag issue, and find a more “graceful” way for koi to enter and leave the pond.
About interactivity – I was thinking about this both during the development as well as just when I had the idea and the intention was always to not have any, simply because in my own experience we are always doing “something”, and this was a way to get a little bit of the opposite – to do nothing.
But I can see how some micro-interactions could be useful. A sort of a “popping bubblewrap” action.
I understand your trepidation sharing this, given how often 'vibe coded' is used derogatorily. I like what you made, thank you.
This is honestly super cool, and a lot of fun. I was about to say something about the koi fish spawning and despawning until I read that they are the other users on the site, which is an awesome mechanic. Is there a way to set this as a screen saver or background?
Great post, OP. Way to overcome. Keep it up.
This is great! I would really like this as live background on Android.
Have a big virtual hug from me, hxii!
Super cool, thanks for making this! I've been there with you on the perfectionism. Glad that 'good enough' won this time, and we're all the better for it. Keep going!
Been on a train of thought recently that with AI making web dev so much easier that we should be making more beautiful experiences.
I have always felt ultra minimalism is partly a way of fighting bugs. Why can't we put more effort to make every site a great experience in of itself?
Been experimenting with going way beyond my usual frontend work for something truly special. This made me think if it. It's 10x the effort but that's about the same effort I put in before manually making a minimal one.
I want more koi fish swimming around my saas.
Seems like quite laggy (I suppose bcz of heavy assets and rendering). I would have liked it more if we had some interactive elments with the pond or the fishes because I can only stare at it for some seconds lol
Had a desktop aquarium once, very calming. This digital version is probably less messy and just as effective.