>Developing software is complex and error-prone, so people need to be thinking when doing it. And yeah, I realize that these opinions are controversial to some.

>Developing software is complex and error-prone, so people need to be thinking when doing it. And yeah, I realize that these opinions are controversial to some. I agree. However, I don't see how syntax highlighting necessarily makes reasoning code easier or harder. I don't know if the arguments are specious, but I think and feel that much of the arguments in the article are weak and unconvincing. The author has already dismissed (without examination) the strongest argument for syntax highlighting: aesthetics. There are whole philosophies of aesthetics that makes a lot of sense, but only when we go beyond the mere results of the programming. The aesthetic argument for syntax highlighting isn't for the sake of the quality of the resulting program but rather, the quality of the experience for the programmer. That in and of itself is underestimated by a fixation on the resulting code. There are philosophies that precisely define aesthetics, but these are generally in the non-dual philosophies, not the dualist philosophies. As soon as you have a dualist philosophy, you set up an opposition between privileging objective over subjective, or subjective over objective, and it resolves nothing. Non-dual philosophies do not privilege objective over subjective, or subjective over objective, and have a lot of useful, testable (empirical, experienceable) things to say about aesthetics. Aesthetics bring a human perspective to the technology and reminds us that, however efficient a technology is, it shapes and is in turn shaped by our experiences as human beings.