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I always liked the argument that what should be highlighted is not the syntax but the structure, that is to say, different variables and objects should get diff
by somat 4y ago
I always liked the argument that what should be highlighted is not the syntax but the structure, that is to say, different variables and objects should get different colors, this is never done because it requires your editor to understand the state of your program, that is, a very hard task.
Other that that, at least for me, a little syntax highlighting goes a long way, mostly I don't use it at all.
- enneff 4y agoIt’s actually a somewhat solved task, by editors that support LSP. I can’t think of a UX that would work well for generally colouring identifiers distinctly though. One nice feature that does exist is selecting an identifier and highlighting other instances of that identifier (semantically, not just by string matching). This makes actively reading code a lot easier. It would be interesting to see this extended to allow multiple selections.