He turned the contribution graph into a 3D skyline—some in the comments cheer, others frown

Divan Raj posted a video on X that turned a contribution graph into a city skyline.

The contribution graph is familiar: those rows of small squares on a GitHub profile record how much code you commit each day. Divan stood it upright, turning each square into a building—the more commits, the taller the building—and together they form a city outline. There's also an impact effect when you click, and the buildings bounce.

The comments split into two camps. One camp thinks it's cool, asks whether it will be open-sourced, and suggests running it directly on GitHub data. The other camp is more pragmatic. Adam Fard said the smart approach is to keep a flat dot-matrix chart on the dashboard and put the 3D skyline in a drill-down panel. Artan was more direct: the click impact effect feels uncomfortable to look at, but the dashboard itself is good.

These two comments hit the key point. Data visualization has two goals: looking good and being useful. The 3D skyline does give dull contribution data a visual sense; at a glance you can see which time period has 'tall' buildings and which area has 'short' ones. But on the main dashboard, the occlusion, perspective distortion, and click animations of 3D graphics all add cognitive load. A user who wants to check the number of commits on a certain day doesn't need to admire the city scenery first.

Divan's reply was relaxed: users can choose dark or light mode themselves. But in product design, visual style is never just a skinning issue. A skyline is better suited as an exploration entry point, creating the urge to 'take a look' and then click in to see the specific data. The main view should still be left to flat, precise, quickly scannable charts.

Turning a contribution graph into a skyline is a fun visual experiment. It reminds us of one thing: data can tell a story, but don't let the story get in the way of the data.