Syntax highlighting is a topic where EVERYONE has an opinion, so I'll give my 2 cents as well. I am using solarized light (http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

Syntax highlighting is a topic where EVERYONE has an opinion, so I'll give my 2 cents as well. I am using solarized light (http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized) for my coding, and am very happy with it. I like having keywords emphasised, because they convey a lot of the structure of the program. If you need to switch syntax highlighting off to see whether code is ugly or not, you might not have a very refined sense of beauty anyway. That said, I am perfectly fine with programming without syntax highlighting, I am not dependent on it to understand code. It is similar for type inference: I think it is OK if it makes your code easier to read, if you use type inference though to a point where you cannot understand / write your code without it, you are doing it wrong.