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What I've once read is that the advantages for syntax highlighting are biggest for beginners (in general or in that programming language). This seems logical wh
by legulere 11y ago
What I've once read is that the advantages for syntax highlighting are biggest for beginners (in general or in that programming language). This seems logical when looking at what syntax highlighting does: colouring differently according to the token type. Beginners might have more problems finding the borders of what belongs together and what kind of token something is.
If we compare this with classical text, we won't have any typographic help for the inner structures of sentences, maybe simply because colouring different types of words differently was quite hard. Typography there is used for the outer structure. Mostly vertical space is used to separate paragraphs. This is also used in programming. However making headlines bigger and use a different type isn't used in programming. Programming uses indentation instead. It is pretty obvious that it's this way because of the limitations of the medium in the beginning. Also it's not as easy as classifying tokens.
- paulryanrogers 11y agoIt can also help when jumping around between many different languages, especially when they are similar.
- clishem 11y agoInterestingly enough, the author of the article notes that it has become easier for him to jump around different languages.