What one person considers optimal may not work for someone else. Optimal in the context of programmer productivity is a subjective measure or opinion, not a qua

What one person considers optimal may not work for someone else. Optimal in the context of programmer productivity is a subjective measure or opinion, not a quality always improved for everyone by something like syntax highlighting. I would venture that Russ Cox and Rob Pike (who dismissed syntax highlighting more strongly than Cox, calling it "juvenile") have demonstrated productivity far greater than the majority of programmers. I believe Linux Torvalds uses uemacs, which doesn't have syntax coloring. What other productive programmers use, or don't use, may not persuade anyone but I think such examples show that the relationship between syntax highlighting and actual programmer productivity may be weak, or more subjective than some people think.