4 ms·

I guess it turns out actively depriving yourself of relevant information at a glance isn’t that popular, no.

by orf 5y ago

kieckerjan 5y ago
The way I see it, most syntax highlighting is actively adding mostly irrelevant information to the cognitive load of programming: stuff that should be obvious if you know the language. It does as little for my understanding as a novel in which, say, every proper noun was printed in red. I can imagine more useful highlighting than color coding the types of the symbols encountered. Lighting up the active scopes. Giving the same hue to names that look like each other. There are probably highlighters out there that do that. But "simple" syntax highlighting is still the norm.
- orf 5y ago
  The same argument could be made for seeing anything in colour: > most colours are actively adding irrelevant information to the cognitive load of existing. It should be obvious that apples and red and the sky is blue. That’s silly, because it does add relevant information. Obviously it’s a spectrum - too many colours can hide information, but when used appropriately it’s fine. Also everyone is different. Perhaps your brain gets distracted by the colours more than the majority of people.
- mijoharas 5y ago
  > Lighting up the active scopes As you had guessed a little later, there are a few different emacs packages that do this. One of them is "rainbow parentheses" that gives every bracket a different colour (remember that emacs supports lisp, so differentiating between lots of different parentheses is arguably more useful in emacs than any other editor). [0]. Another one is highlight parentheses [1] which highlights all parens that enclose the cursor position, and gives a darker colour to those "further away" from the cursor. [0] https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-delimiters https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-delimiters [1] https://sr.ht/~tsdh/highlight-parentheses.el/ https://sr.ht/~tsdh/highlight-parentheses.el/
- ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
  > Giving the same hue to names that look like each other. Emacs' 'Rainbow Identifiers' does that. I like it. https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-identifiers
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mst 5y ago
While I'm aware that OP and I are in a minority - there is a cognitive overhead to having that information surfaced at all times when you may be trying to focus on something at e.g. the method level rather than the individual syntactic element level, and if that cognitive overhead exceeds the utility of having that information available, the sensible answer is to turn the highlighting off. If I could have some sort of focus follows mind where highlighting automatically happens commensurate to what level of granularity I'm currently thinking about the code at I would be extremely interested, but absent "focus follows mind" it's a trade-off that everybody has to make for themselves. Some people prefer to highlight almost everything, some almost nothing, some people find it helpful for some languages/tasks but not for others. It's similar IME to the extent to which preferred debugging styles (printf versus interactive versus hybrid versus situational choices) are also something people have to figure out, and, well, different people are different, and that's neither a bad thing nor an avoidable thing.
- Kinrany 5y ago
  The IDE could temporarily turn off all syntax highlighting outside the node that has the cursor.
  - mst 5y ago
    Where the cursor is and where my mental focus is don't necessarily match, and it's really the granularity problem - expression level versus statement versus block versus etc. that causes 'mismatch between highlighting and focus' for me at least. It certainly sounds like an experiment that would be interesting to try, though.
- nusaru 5y ago
  I wonder if perhaps this is also a generational thing. Programmers from before syntax highlighting became popular would be less likely to prefer it, no? I’m not even sure if programmers from current/recent generations ever prefer not to have syntax highlighting, but I’m genuinely curious if there are such people out there.
  - 5y ago
turminal 5y ago
Define relevant

I guess it turns out actively depriving yourself of relevant information at a glance isn’t that popular, no.

by orf 5y ago

I guess it turns out actively depriving yourself of relevant information at a glance isn’t that popular, no.

The way I see it, most syntax highlighting is actively adding mostly irrelevant information to the cognitive load of programming: stuff that should be obvious if you know the language. It does as little for my understanding as a novel in which, say, every proper noun was printed in red. I can imagine more useful highlighting than color coding the types of the symbols encountered. Lighting up the active scopes. Giving the same hue to names that look like each other. There are probably highlighters out there that do that. But "simple" syntax highlighting is still the norm.

orf 5y ago
The same argument could be made for seeing anything in colour: > most colours are actively adding irrelevant information to the cognitive load of existing. It should be obvious that apples and red and the sky is blue. That’s silly, because it does add relevant information. Obviously it’s a spectrum - too many colours can hide information, but when used appropriately it’s fine. Also everyone is different. Perhaps your brain gets distracted by the colours more than the majority of people.
mijoharas 5y ago
> Lighting up the active scopes As you had guessed a little later, there are a few different emacs packages that do this. One of them is "rainbow parentheses" that gives every bracket a different colour (remember that emacs supports lisp, so differentiating between lots of different parentheses is arguably more useful in emacs than any other editor). [0]. Another one is highlight parentheses [1] which highlights all parens that enclose the cursor position, and gives a darker colour to those "further away" from the cursor. [0] https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-delimiters https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-delimiters [1] https://sr.ht/~tsdh/highlight-parentheses.el/ https://sr.ht/~tsdh/highlight-parentheses.el/
ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
> Giving the same hue to names that look like each other. Emacs' 'Rainbow Identifiers' does that. I like it. https://github.com/Fanael/rainbow-identifiers
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mst 5y ago

While I'm aware that OP and I are in a minority - there is a cognitive overhead to having that information surfaced at all times when you may be trying to focus on something at e.g. the method level rather than the individual syntactic element level, and if that cognitive overhead exceeds the utility of having that information available, the sensible answer is to turn the highlighting off. If I could have some sort of focus follows mind where highlighting automatically happens commensurate to what level of granularity I'm currently thinking about the code at I would be extremely interested, but absent "focus follows mind" it's a trade-off that everybody has to make for themselves. Some people prefer to highlight almost everything, some almost nothing, some people find it helpful for some languages/tasks but not for others. It's similar IME to the extent to which preferred debugging styles (printf versus interactive versus hybrid versus situational choices) are also something people have to figure out, and, well, different people are different, and that's neither a bad thing nor an avoidable thing.

Kinrany 5y ago
The IDE could temporarily turn off all syntax highlighting outside the node that has the cursor.
- mst 5y ago
  Where the cursor is and where my mental focus is don't necessarily match, and it's really the granularity problem - expression level versus statement versus block versus etc. that causes 'mismatch between highlighting and focus' for me at least. It certainly sounds like an experiment that would be interesting to try, though.
nusaru 5y ago
I wonder if perhaps this is also a generational thing. Programmers from before syntax highlighting became popular would be less likely to prefer it, no? I’m not even sure if programmers from current/recent generations ever prefer not to have syntax highlighting, but I’m genuinely curious if there are such people out there.
- 5y ago

turminal 5y ago

Define relevant