Oh man, I 100% agree about color! I've worked on Snap! (which looks a lot like Scratch) and it has a feature called "zebra coloring" that's very similar. I've s

Oh man, I 100% agree about color! I've worked on Snap! (which looks a lot like Scratch) and it has a feature called "zebra coloring" that's very similar. I've seen it be very effective with students. Hacking up a friendly version of emacs does sound like an interesting project. I suspect it's an uphill battle to convince people to use it, but someone should try. :)