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Syntax Highlighting Off

robertmelton.com

1–10 of 110 posts

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#2
"Reading code is simply more straightforward, smoother and less jumpy. I get the overarching context faster and with less hassle."

This makes me think the author might be one of those people who can not superficially scan text very efficiently and resort to.. well, just reading it, word by word. (Is there a term for this phenomenon?)

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#3
Next step: programming using ed.

But jokes aside, use whatever environment you like best. For me syntax highlighting is extremely useful. Knowing whether some strings of characters is a type or a variable, or a class type or a basic type makes programming just that much easier. It also helps catching simple typos if something doesn't have the color you'd expect.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#5
post #2

"Reading code is simply more straightforward, smoother and less jumpy. I get the overarching context faster and with less hassle." This makes me think the author might be one of those people who can not superficially scan text very efficiently and resort to.. well, just reading it, word by word. (Is there a term for this phenomenon?)

Yeah, syntax highlighting definitely makes things easier to scan and quickly process a file in my head.

It also helps with instantly seeing if you are missing a "/' (or used the wrong one to terminate a string variable), as the rest of the line/file has the wrong colours.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#6
Many color schemes take the most important parts and fade them out: comments!

In Haskell I have different colors for the comments, keywords, and literals. That's it. Anything more is not helpful.

It's baffling to me to look at source on Github and see a screen full of comments, greyed out.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#7

Many syntax highlight themes seem to hide comments in code by decreasing their contrast. I'm strongly against that so for me the author lost credibility when I saw that's more or less only what his theme do.

That does depend where you sit on the spectrum between wanting ubiquitous commenting and believing that comments are themselves a smell.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#8

Many color schemes take the most important parts and fade them out: comments! In Haskell I have different colors for the comments, keywords, and literals. That's it. Anything more is not helpful. It's baffling to me to look at source on Github and see a screen full of comments, greyed out.

I hate when comments are highlighted. Makes it difficult to read the code as they distract me.

The code is what is hard to read, comments are easy to read. I want help focusing on the code, I don't mind if the highlight structure doesn't help me read the comments as they are more than easy to read already.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#9
post #3

Next step: programming using ed. But jokes aside, use whatever environment you like best. For me syntax highlighting is extremely useful. Knowing whether some strings of characters is a type or a variable, or a class type or a basic type makes programming just that much easier. It also helps catching simple typos if something doesn't have the color you'd expect.

Ed is fun. I admit that it's mere geekery to prefer it over something feasible, but it's worth it when you spend an afternoon just playing with it. Also I guess it'd be nice exercise for vi users. But some syntax highlighting is really useful nearly universally.

Re: Syntax Highlighting Off

#10

Many syntax highlight themes seem to hide comments in code by decreasing their contrast. I'm strongly against that so for me the author lost credibility when I saw that's more or less only what his theme do.

Why does the author having different preferences have anything to do with his credibility?
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