Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solarized

ethanschoonover.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 186 posts

Re: Solarized

#151

Post by 100011_100001 »

pjerem wrote: post #20

As someone with an important astigmatism, I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme, even if I love their aesthetic. So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes. In this context, Solarized is a gift and I’m grateful for it. I just cannot name another light color scheme you could stare at all day long without burning your eyes.

White backgrounds create static like artifacts in my vision. Doesn't happen as much with dark. I've tried Light Themes because in theory it's better for asthegmatism, but it's definitely worse for me.

I even thought that maybe I had to make everything light themed so there is no contrast between pages /apps but it doesn't help.

This is purely a personal observation of how my eyes work.

Re: Solarized

#152

Post by yojo »

fencepost wrote: post #139
yojo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to become a writer, you should definitely have a financial cushion. Replicating Stross’s success will almost certainly take years of minimally paid hard work, plus a fair bit of luck. Writing is a hard, hard business. Unless you can write proficiently in the romance genre. There’s gold in them hills.

Re: writing, there are also people making decent money with web serials and Patreon (then publishing to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited). I suspect the most successful ones are exceeding Stephen King levels of output. You'll find some of them on Royal Road. Lots of fantasy, litrpg, xianxia - fluffy serializable things.

I ran a novel on Royal Road as a serial. Definitely a hard market to get traction in if you’re not doing litrpg or xanxia. I published a techno thriller at 2+ chapters a week for six months and ended up with ~20 readers for the conclusion.

My three reviews were solid (all five star), but if you’re not writing to the site genres you’ll struggle to find an audience. One of my reviewers even mentioned they’d never read a techno thriller before.

Also tried Wattpad and Inkitt - basically zero views on the former, hard to say on Inkitt. Their stat reporting is super bad. Got one review there, so presumably less readers than RoyalRoad.

Re: Solarized

#153

Post by brabarossa »

alexruf wrote: post #42

Does someone know of a tool that helps to generate the themes for the individual applications based on your preferred color scheme? I am currently using Dracula ( https://draculatheme.com/ ) as color scheme. Not that it is my favourite color scheme (actually I don’t like it’s colours at all), but the fact that the creator is providing ready to use themes for almost every application is the main reason for me to use i…

They even have instructions for Hacker News! On behalf of my tired eyes, thank you.

Re: Solarized

#154

Post by 8589934591 »

sitta wrote: post #82

It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users. Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prio…

I use atom light. I find it the best light theme so far.

Re: Solarized

#155

Post by 29athrowaway »

mosburger wrote: post #125
cstross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly the downvotes are because folks (like me) who started coding in light text on dark backgrounds in the 80s had emphatically not hit retirement age by 2010? They'd be between their late thirties and maybe late fifties, unless you want to push it all the way back to the 1970s or earlier -- the build-out of computing infrastructure over the past century has been exponential, so there is always a preponderance of…

As a 48 year old who's feeling quite burnt out, I'm curious to learn more about this sideways move... I'm feeling a bit trapped right now. :( EDIT: Ah, checked your profile and history and it seems like you've become a writer? Hmm... maybe I could do that... (BTW, the SSL cert for your website has expired!) EDIT2: Thanks for the advice on writing, all! Honestly, I was thinking of taking the technical writer route. I'…

If you are 48 years old, you were about 6 years old in 1980.

I was certainly not referring to you, but people who were in their 20s during that time.

Re: Solarized

#156

Post by Oreb »

sitta wrote: post #82

It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users. Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prio…

Adding to the other suggestions: I much prefer Leuven and Modus Operandi over Solarized Light.

Re: Solarized

#157

Post by cstross »

yojo wrote: post #134
mosburger wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 48 year old who's feeling quite burnt out, I'm curious to learn more about this sideways move... I'm feeling a bit trapped right now. :( EDIT: Ah, checked your profile and history and it seems like you've become a writer? Hmm... maybe I could do that... (BTW, the SSL cert for your website has expired!) EDIT2: Thanks for the advice on writing, all! Honestly, I was thinking of taking the technical writer route. I'…

If you want to become a writer, you should definitely have a financial cushion. Replicating Stross’s success will almost certainly take years of minimally paid hard work, plus a fair bit of luck. Writing is a hard, hard business. Unless you can write proficiently in the romance genre. There’s gold in them hills.

I wrote my first novel-shaped object when I was 15.

Sold my first short story for actual money aged 21.

First novel sold when I was 36.

... Stopped doing other stuff (mainly freelance computer journalism) to sub the fiction when I was 42.

The sole consolation is that I'm doing okay now and my career didn't really get started until most successful pop stars are at the touring-with-the-greatest-hits-playlist stage (or have given up and gotten a job as an accountant).

On romance; yes, it outsells all other commercial fiction genres combined. But don't assume it's easy money: there's a lot of competition, and every genre turns out to be much harder than it looks once you dig your teeth into it.

Re: Solarized

#158

Post by Retric »

wakaru44 wrote: post #129
Retric wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you mean proper “dark” themes? Being able to swap to coding in light test on a dark or dark text on a light background goes back to at least windows 3.11. Solarized dark theme to me looks just like several other similar themes that predate it ex: https://superuser.com/questions/156979/how-to-i-use-textmate... But I assume you have something specific in mind here?

I would assume 'proper' means 'adequate in terms of function and aesthetics'. maybe something like 'themes that don't eschew real usefulness'. those themes did exist before solarized, but they were not the norm in many circles (mine included), as many authors did sacrifice function for the look&feel. solarized demonstrated how to apply colour theory/science to the landscape. I would add that it has been not just the…

> not the norm in many circles (mine included)

Fair enough, I have the opposite experience where most people using dark UI’s where doing so for utility reasons not aesthetics. Outside of a brief fad of Matrix themed terminals which quickly died out.

Re: Solarized

#159

Post by [deleted] »

beachy wrote: post #98
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. I'm going out on a limb, but perhaps macOS' Dark Mode, or VSCode's dark mode, wouldn't exist without Solarized blazing that path. It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing re…

> I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. Apart from the IBM 3279 color terminal, released in 1974, and literally hundreds of devices following (and maybe preceding) that.

[deleted]

Re: Solarized

#160

Post by masswerk »

rcarmo wrote: post #36
masswerk wrote: post #12

Mind that the BBEdit information and format is out of date. Updated files can be found at the original project repository [1]. Moreover, due to containerization the "Color Schemes" directory has meanwhile moved and is now at `~/Library/Containers/com.barebones.bbedit/Data/Library/Application\ Support/BBEdit/Color\ Schemes`. (This can be simply navigated to from within BBEdit via the "BBEdit" menu > "Folders" > "Color…

Thanks for this. I will add an issue so I can note that in the docs.

Thanks for providing the color schemes!
Post reply on HN