Which colour scheme is better? • Hacker News Board

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#31

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

pritovido wrote: post #22

I use only dark schemes for programming and is way more relaxing for my eyes. One of the reasons is that the minimum brightness of my screens are just too bright compared to ambient light at night, and I love my ambient light at night, that is quite bright but illuminates all the room, so I can work on the room, and use things like blackboards or notepads, not just the computer screen. It hurts my eyes to have white…

If it's true that the minimum brightness is still too bright, that's an easy fix.

If you're on a Mac, there are several freeware utilities to do exactly that, Shady was at one point the most popular. I assume there are similar utilities for Windows and Linux.

They work by lowering the RGB intensities of all the pixels on your screen, instead of lowering the backlight further. It has exactly the same effect in the end.

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#32

Post by uniqueid » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

mr_toad wrote: post #29

uniqueid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they correct? Computer science is not a field in which learners can reason about best practises for themselves. There is so much to learn that most of the habits we adopt are just articles of faith. For example, it took me 15 years to ask myself if I was really happy using camelCase. When I thought about the issue for myself , it was glaringly clear that snake_case is easier to read and reason about. If light col…

One important difference is that your choice of colour scheme usually only affects you, while your code will more likely be read by others.

Very true! That undercuts my choice to use snake_case, but strengthens my overall argument to advocate for light color schemes (assuming they are indeed better).

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#33

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

readthenotes wrote: post #12

I couldn't read the article. The letters were washed out in the glare. What did it say?

Wow. How do you manage to read 99% of what's published on the internet? Including commenting on HN? :P

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#34

Post by cmbell715 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

stephc_int13 wrote: post #17

I do use two different color schemes depending on ambiant light. Dark background during the night, and light background during the day, in most cases. As simple as that. I wish my text editor would switch automatically and I might write a script to do that at some point, but this is a minor annoyance.

I know VS Code has a way to do it depending on window color scheme. Not sure if it is supported in Linux, but it is in Windows and MacOS. If your overall OS theme auto-changes based on time of day (or if you manually switch between light and dark mode whenever), VS Code will adjust as well.

In the settings turn on `window.autoDetectColorScheme: true` then select a theme for each: `workbench.preferredLightColorTheme` & `workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme`

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#35

Post by coldtea » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

illumanaughty wrote: post #3

Trying to claim light color schemes are scientifically better based solely on the The Pulfrich effect is absurd. The best color scheme for programming is the one you like and can comfortably look at for extended periods of time. Your eyes are different than mine so trying to claim this is a scientific means of determining the best color scheme is about as useful as you telling me what my favourite color is based on '…

>The best color scheme for programming is the one you like and can comfortably look at for extended periods of time. Your eyes are different than mine

No, your eyes are not different than theirs or mine. We share a common psysiology and optical mechanisms. Eyes work (in the absense of some mutation or disease, which covers most of us) the same way, with the same wiring, etc.

Your preference (e.g. like vs dark backgrounds) might be different, but that's not the same as your eyes being different.

And you could very well slow down/hurt or dellude yourself that your preference is better.

This is akin to someone saying a salad plus chicken is healthier than a McBurger and another replying that they like McBurgers, that what's important is what they can "comfortambly" eat, and that your mouth is "different" than theirs.

The preference part simply doesn't matter as to whether something is better on the eyes or not.

And while the "Pulfrich effect" might not be a good or enough justification, it's much less absurd than the above, which implies that there can't ever be a justification because whats easier/faster to process/etc on the eye is just "taste".

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#36

Post by avmich » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #19

So, I have used both routinely, and don't really care too much one way or the other. I use dark more often, but if for whatever reason I'm in an editor that is light-themed (which happens not uncommonly), it's not worth any of my time to switch. So I don't have strong emotions on this. However, I do notice that "because science says so" is becoming a more and more common "you are not allowed to argue with my conclusi…

> However, I do notice that "because science says so" is becoming a more and more common "you are not allowed to argue with my conclusions" kind of add-on to any assertion. It is an oddly religious, faith-like use of the word "science".

Conclusions are based on science? So, in a sense, they are the best result available based on evidence, best accepted theories, reasoning? Isn't it logical to say then that one approach is better that another because it's "based on science"?

What is faith-like here? Faith in scientific method, instead of having scientific method based on best results?

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#37

Post by nwah1 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

Some people have photosensitivity. Those with lighter colored eyes tend to have more photosensitivity. I wonder if this affects the preferences one way or another.

There's also plenty of shades between white and black, and maybe there's some kind of sweet spot.

Another issue is that syntax highlighting is easier to notice on dark themes, and differentiating between type annotations and variables and functions and operators probably takes much more brain power than the visual recognition of the text.

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#38

Post by brendt_gd » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

illumanaughty wrote: post #3

Trying to claim light color schemes are scientifically better based solely on the The Pulfrich effect is absurd. The best color scheme for programming is the one you like and can comfortably look at for extended periods of time. Your eyes are different than mine so trying to claim this is a scientific means of determining the best color scheme is about as useful as you telling me what my favourite color is based on '…

> solely on the The Pulfrich effect

Did you read the whole post? There's

- The Pulfrich effect

- The way human eyes are built

- The case of astigmatism

- Studies targeted towards computer screen use

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#39

Post by 4WIW » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

Some people may remember: first there were video terminals with light-on-dark to conserve fluorescent layer of CRTs, IBM PC continued the tradition and then Apple Macintosh came out with white background. Apple's argument was that people's eyes were trained for black-on-white print and it was one of the distinctive features of the platform then.

There must be a reason why the print developed as black-on-white, maybe people preferred it this way.

So pick what you prefer: paper-style or CRT-style.

Re: Which colour scheme is better?

#40

Post by anomaloustho » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

Just because it doesn’t look like this has been mentioned already. I’m not sure that the time it takes to process and recognize a character in milliseconds is the primary bottleneck to understanding code. It is merely assumption, but I assume that code comprehension is far more difficult and slower for most than standard reading. There can be a significant mental burden when working out all of the fine details of how the code will operate, especially if written by someone else. It can be even more difficult when the code isn’t intention revealing.

On another note, there are the often cited user studies that show that interfaces that are purely more aesthetically pleasing tend to be used more efficiently vs the exact same interfaces with “uglier” presentation. So a color scheme that is most aesthetically pleasing to each user might provide a subconscious boost in wielding their editor and its features.

As a third and less related thought, I think we could make much bigger strides in understanding code by creating better tools, better static analysis, better IDEs, etcetera. This is just my opinion but I would guess that additional tooling to help you discover and analyze the behavior, relationships, and history of the code you’re reading could yield better results than the 15ms character recognition optimization. I would also guess that for most, far more time could be saved speeding up builds and tests. That’s not to say that it’s not worthwhile to optimize character recognition speed. But I would guess that character recognition speed is not the main processing time in the mental “stack” when reading code.