I write a lot of code on whiteboards or paper as well, but I could not bear to part with syntax highlighting. When you're off the machine, a missing quote or se

I write a lot of code on whiteboards or paper as well, but I could not bear to part with syntax highlighting. When you're off the machine, a missing quote or semi-color won't cause the whole thing to come crashing down. The same can't be said for when you're actually typing things. As the author already mentioned, strings are really annoying to work with when you don't have syntax highlighting for them. I would group comments in the same category. It's difficult to see where they begin and end without the visual cues provided by syntax highlighting. That can quickly become a disaster. I did try out going through code just now without syntax highlighting. New and short programs weren't bad at all, but going through files with hundreds of lines quickly became a challenge. This might work for the author, but it's not for me (nor, I suspect, for most people). Colors and font styling make it easy to get a grasp of what's going on. Taking that away does reduce noise, but cuts down far more on signal.