rusq / ncscr

Norton Commander Starry Night Screensaver remake

Starry Night Screensaver

Purpose: serves no purpose, but to entertain.

This is not the work of science, but an object of art. A perfect copy of a masterpiece once created, but only remembered by few today. You get a unique chance to experience the same emotions your ancestors experienced when left their IBM PCs untouched for 5 minutes or so.

An artists impression of the original Norton Commander v4 and v5 Starry Night screensaver implemented in Go.

If it serves no purpose, what does it do?

Your terminal or command prompt will go blank, and a bunch of stars will start to emerge from darkness. You may even find some familiar constellations (ahem) if you wait long enough.

After a while, some stars will begin to explode, only to give birth to a new stars in this eternal cycle of life and death. When the last star explodes, you will know that the world has come to an end, or maybe you pressed any key and the program terminated. You'll never know.

Where did this come from?

This hidden gem has been lying around the dusty pile of projects, I thought it would be such a waste to keep it just to myself, so releasing it to public. Sharing is caring.

Tested to work on macOS, Windows and Linux.

But WHY?

You're asking too many questions.

Building

go build .

Running

If compiled:

./ncsrc

If not:

go run .