3 ms·

>Syntax Highlighting >Your focus will be in semantics and it is easier to get into it without the syntax aggressively jumping at your face. I'm not sure I agr

by Inityx 9y ago

>Syntax Highlighting >Your focus will be in semantics and it is easier to get into it without the syntax aggressively jumping at your face. I'm not sure I agree with this. As a programmer, your tool for expressing semantics is through syntax. While the author argues that disabling syntax highlighting makes the syntax less important, I feel that removing syntax highlighting places undue stress on the author by removing the first level of immediate validation that the syntax is correct. I find myself jumping between languages far too often to trust myself to use the correct syntax on the first try, so much so that I consider in-editor linting to be an indispensable tool. Perhaps if someone only ever wrote one or a few very different languages, they wouldn't have to worry about if their language indexes by range with [a:b], [a..b], or .slice(a,b).

ams6110 9y ago
Syntax highlighting doesn't bother me; I don't disable it. But when I learned to program I used monochrome terminals like VT100 or ADM-3a and it just wasn't a thing that could be done, so I also feel quite comfortable without it. Syntax highlighting is most useful to me to make things like unclosed quotes stand out. I don't find the highlighted reserved words and other highlights to be all that beneficial.
- anon335dtzbvc 9y ago
  You could still use a VT100 terminal, no need for fancy modern X terminals and vi.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tzs 9y ago
> I find myself jumping between languages far too often to trust myself to use the correct syntax on the first try, so much so that I consider in-editor linting to be an indispensable tool. I've been sorely tempted several times to: 1. pick one syntax for things like array initialization, ranges, for loops, string quoting, and various other things that are all reasonably similar from a functionality point of view in Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript but use different enough syntax that I sometimes forget which one is right, 2. start writing my Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript using that syntax, and 3. write some sort of preprocessor that takes in files that are Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript but that use my syntax instead of the native syntax, and replaces my syntax with native syntax. I usually didn't go ahead with it because I just figured I was being silly and everyone would make fun of me. :-) But now it seems quite common for people to define new languages that are just existing languages with some better syntax or other features and that are translated back to the original language. So now I don't do it because I assume someone else will do it soon, and I'll be happy to just grab theirs and use it.

by Inityx 9y ago

ams6110 9y ago

Syntax highlighting doesn't bother me; I don't disable it. But when I learned to program I used monochrome terminals like VT100 or ADM-3a and it just wasn't a thing that could be done, so I also feel quite comfortable without it. Syntax highlighting is most useful to me to make things like unclosed quotes stand out. I don't find the highlighted reserved words and other highlights to be all that beneficial.

anon335dtzbvc 9y ago
You could still use a VT100 terminal, no need for fancy modern X terminals and vi.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tzs 9y ago

> I find myself jumping between languages far too often to trust myself to use the correct syntax on the first try, so much so that I consider in-editor linting to be an indispensable tool. I've been sorely tempted several times to: 1. pick one syntax for things like array initialization, ranges, for loops, string quoting, and various other things that are all reasonably similar from a functionality point of view in Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript but use different enough syntax that I sometimes forget which one is right, 2. start writing my Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript using that syntax, and 3. write some sort of preprocessor that takes in files that are Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript but that use my syntax instead of the native syntax, and replaces my syntax with native syntax. I usually didn't go ahead with it because I just figured I was being silly and everyone would make fun of me. :-) But now it seems quite common for people to define new languages that are just existing languages with some better syntax or other features and that are translated back to the original language. So now I don't do it because I assume someone else will do it soon, and I'll be happy to just grab theirs and use it.