Why ASCII Art is Still the Ultimate Dev Nostalgia.
If you’ve ever opened a new terminal tool, checked a repository's README.md, or looked closely at a well-documented source code file, chances are you’ve run into ASCII art.
While it feels like a relic of the 1980s BBS board era, this text-based design medium is still alive, kicking, and surprisingly practical in modern development.
What is ASCII Art?
At its core, ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses printable characters from the ASCII standard (letters, numbers, and symbols like /, \, |, _) to piece together visual images.
Before high-resolution displays and modern GPUs, this was how developers added personality, logos, and diagrams to text-only screens.
Why Do Developers Still Use It?
Zero Overhead: It requires no image hosting, no external assets, and zero loading time. It’s just plain text.
Terminal Branding: Popular CLI tools (like Homebrew, Docker, or Neofetch) use ASCII splash screens to build an instant, recognizable brand right in your terminal.
Code Organization: Massive codebases sometimes use giant ASCII headers to separate major sections in a single source file, making it easy to spot sections while scrolling fast.
Pure Nostalgia: Let’s honest—it just looks incredibly cool and gives off peak hacker vibes.
Quick Tools to Generate Your Own
You don’t have to manually type out every backslash. Here are the quickest ways to add some flavor to your next project:
FIGlet: A classic command-line tool that turns ordinary text into large, stylized ASCII banners.
TAAG (Text to ASCII Art Generator): An awesome web-based tool with hundreds of fonts to preview your text instantly.
Image-to-ASCII Converters: Tools like jp2a can take an actual .jpg or .png logo and translate it into a grayscale-like block of text.
The Takeaway
ASCII art is a bridge between computing's past and present. Next time you build an open-source tool, consider throwing a custom ASCII logo into your README or CLI startup script. It’s a small, fun touch that shows you care about the details.
Do you use ASCII art in your project configs or CLIs? Drop your favorite generator or your terminal setups in the comments below!
