Ask HN: Do you program in black or white?

Post by Goladus » Mon, Jan 19, 2009, 12:47 PM UTC

I don't like white or black backgrounds, though I prefer white to black in a typical windowed environment. If my editor has the full screen it doesn't matter, but I don't like menus and other windows being a lot brighter than the editor. It's either distracting, or it's a jarring readjustment every time I have to change windows.

If it weren't for syntax highlighting, I'd prefer slight color variations, with not much preference towards dark-on-light or light-on-dark. If I have a lighter background I usually prefer the text to be black. If I have a darker background I usually prefer the text to be slightly colored. In web terms, an example would be "99DD99" text on "303030" background, or "99DD99" background with black text.

Post by maco » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 7:32 AM UTC

hbien wrote: post #5

I started out with dark backgrounds because of vim + Linux. The default terminal was black. Now I use the dark background w/ color text for all my editors/IDEs. I tried switching to the white background for a week, but it really hurt my eyes. I had to switch back after a few days.

I used to think that green on black was the way to go because of that whole "ow, bright light, pain, my eyes!" thing, but it turns out that you can avoid the pain of bright screens and extend your battery life by just turning down the screen brightnesss. I keep mine as low as it goes while still having the backlight on. Though, in a well-lit room, it is possible to read black text on white with the backlight off as well, thus hyper-extending battery life.

Re: Ask HN: Do you program in black or white?

Re: Ask HN: Do you program in black or white?