4 ms·
I consider the lack of highlighting part of a "calm" interface: the only thing that changes as I type, are the characters that I type. But maybe that's just Sto
by floren 6y ago
I consider the lack of highlighting part of a "calm" interface: the only thing that changes as I type, are the characters that I type. But maybe that's just Stockholm Syndrome after 15 years of Acme! :)
When I need to check nesting levels, I use a little acme-trick: double-click on the closing mark (works for parentheses, curly brackets, quotes, probably more) and it'll highlight everything contained within that level. So if I type (some (big (lisp (expression)))) and want to make sure I got the right number of parentheses at the end, I just double-click on the last one and make sure the whole expression gets highlighted. Here's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/Qyvv2K9.png https://i.imgur.com/Qyvv2K9.png
I don't find I need to do it particularly often when writing Go, though, and if I do... well, I start to think about refactoring to make my function invocation less obtuse, or whatever.
- somezero 6y agoInteresting! But you see all of the benefits of syntax highlighting and real-time linting is about being steered towards a working code in a gradual and unmotivated way, prior to actually intending to check whether the code works... Although I'm not sure how critical this really is. My personal argument for them might really `only` be habit.
- gnuvince 6y agoRegarding syntax highlighting, I created my own Emacs theme a few years ago to have only a few constructs highlighted: * The name of a function being defined * Comments * String and character literals The result is very calm [1], but I can still rely on colors to know orient myself and know when I forgot to close a string literal. [1] https://vfoley.xyz/syntax-highlighting/purp3.png https://vfoley.xyz/syntax-highlighting/purp3.png