3 ms·

I like to highlight just the places where you are defining new variables/functions/types so that the definition is easy to spot. What is the point of highlighti

I like to highlight just the places where you are defining new variables/functions/types so that the definition is easy to spot. What is the point of highlighting keywords? I suspect that highlighting engines do it simply because it's easy to do, not because it's useful. It looks like this: http://david.rothlis.net/code_presentation/distracting_syntax_highlighting/ http://david.rothlis.net/code_presentation/distracting_synta...

Adverblessly 10y ago
To me, all three look bad. Eclipse - no colors for different things, hard to find what I'm looking for (if I compare to the Emacs example, if I was looking at this code trying to figure out what members this class has I'd be looking for brown and finding it much more quickly) Emacs - terrible color scheme, both the brown and the green are too bright, not enough contrast to read. Proposed - all the bold text hurts my eyes and distracts me from everything else. In my crazy theme almost every "thing" has its own color, and it is very easy to find what I want by looking for the right "thing" or combination of things. As an example for where highlighting keywords would help (which is what you mentioned in your post), if I'm looking for "that for loop that does the main logic" I'd look for the place with the small blue blob on the left and a long bright blob to the right (if it was an "if" likely both blobs would be smaller ;)).
maaaats 10y ago
That code is pretty unreadable to begin with, don't think any highlighting or not can save it. But I prefer the Eclipse one, it lets you quickly find the various blocks (public, protected etc.) when skimming through. The proposed scheme is one giant blob.
eikenberry 10y ago
One of the points of syntax highlighting is to create visual patterns you can recognize. Highlighting keywords may help with this. Have you tried disabling keywords highlighting and seeing what difference it makes in reading your code?

Adverblessly 10y ago

To me, all three look bad. Eclipse - no colors for different things, hard to find what I'm looking for (if I compare to the Emacs example, if I was looking at this code trying to figure out what members this class has I'd be looking for brown and finding it much more quickly) Emacs - terrible color scheme, both the brown and the green are too bright, not enough contrast to read. Proposed - all the bold text hurts my eyes and distracts me from everything else. In my crazy theme almost every "thing" has its own color, and it is very easy to find what I want by looking for the right "thing" or combination of things. As an example for where highlighting keywords would help (which is what you mentioned in your post), if I'm looking for "that for loop that does the main logic" I'd look for the place with the small blue blob on the left and a long bright blob to the right (if it was an "if" likely both blobs would be smaller ;)).

maaaats 10y ago

That code is pretty unreadable to begin with, don't think any highlighting or not can save it. But I prefer the Eclipse one, it lets you quickly find the various blocks (public, protected etc.) when skimming through. The proposed scheme is one giant blob.

eikenberry 10y ago

One of the points of syntax highlighting is to create visual patterns you can recognize. Highlighting keywords may help with this. Have you tried disabling keywords highlighting and seeing what difference it makes in reading your code?