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I've watched a lot of talks on Python by @dabeaz (David Beazley) and attended a couple of his in-person courses in Chicago. I was always amazed about the fact t
by pixelmonkey 7y ago
I've watched a lot of talks on Python by @dabeaz (David Beazley) and attended a couple of his in-person courses in Chicago. I was always amazed about the fact that he used emacs with no syntax highlighting, no line numbers, etc. as his live coding buffer. When I asked him about it one time, his answer really made me think hard about my own "souped up" vim setup.
He said, "The hard part of coding in Python isn't getting the syntax right; the hard part is getting the logic right. Syntax highlighting makes me focus on the syntax when I should be focusing on the logic."
I didn't change my own setup, but it did get me to question my default assumptions on the practice.
That said, one specific example when syntax highlighting is very useful IMO is "rainbow parentheses". Especially when coding in Scheme, Racket, Lisp, Clojure, etc. But also for matching parens in fluent APIs and for matching braces in JSON.
- gav 7y agoI spent a long time without syntax highlighting, or very minor highlighting (parenthesis/brackets/braces) but at a conference somebody told me that looking at monochrome text all day was depressing and that adding color with syntax highlighting made things less gloomy. Since then I've liked adding a little color.
- pixelmonkey 7y agoThe aesthetic feeling of a nicely colored buffer is the reason I keep my syntax highlighting around! It just feels nice.
- CmdrKrool 7y agoA counter response to Beazley's quote might be, "syntax highlighting helps the syntax get out of the way so that I can focus on the logic". I suppose that's exactly what's happening in your "rainbow parentheses" case when you have way better things to do than squinting to count those little bleeders.