4 ms·

There's a reason for this. Rob Pike was asked about it and said that syntax highlighting reminds him of the bright colors of children's toys and he personally

by treyd 1mo ago

There's a reason for this. Rob Pike was asked about it and said that syntax highlighting reminds him of the bright colors of children's toys and he personally disables it so that he can focus on the text. I don't know why it's still like that but that's the original reasoning.

jeremyjh 1mo ago
What is childish is holding up one guy's editor preferences as a religious sacrament when 99.9% of your readers have different preferences.
- dotwaffle 1mo ago
  Well, there's kind of a precedent at least... > Gofmt's style is no one's favorite, yet gofmt is everyone's favorite.
  - saturn_vk 1mo ago
    That's been a major success
    - XorNot 1mo ago
      It basically revolutionized the entire industry and thank god. Opinionated standard formatting is now the default.
  - poncho_romero 1mo ago
    Unlike formatting preferences, the colours I use in my editor don't effect others. That said I might not mind living in a world where everyone used the same highlighting scheme, as long as it was reasonable ;)
tester457 1mo ago
> Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods). I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals. https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3BHV6QFfIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...
- IshKebab 1mo ago
  That must be why traffic lights and electrical wires and transit maps are all black and white...
  - abtinf 1mo ago
    That’s an interesting point. The reason traffic lights are colored is because they are showing distinct states of the same thing and the color is the means of differentiating. Same for transit maps: different routes are colored to distinguish them from other routes, which is especially useful if they overlap. But that’s not what syntax highlighting does. The equivalent of your examples would be to not highlight the syntax at all, but only use color coding to distinguish variables. The equivalent of how syntax highlighting currently works for your examples would be if the light fixture was one color, and the light pole was another, but then all the actual lights were the same color. I actually think highlighting only the variables with distinct colors could be extremely valuable. Would certainly help avoid mistakes with nested i/j loop counters. Edit to add: come to think of it, it would have been even more valuable in Go, until recently anyway. The variable color coding would expose the common loop variable instance bugs, because a programmer would be instantly puzzled by the unexpected coloring.
    - IshKebab 1mo ago
      That does exist, it's called semantic highlighting. In any case, my analogy was not perfect, but neither was Russ's! The point is it's totally normal and not "childish" to use colours to help distinguish things. Traffic lights do not technically need colours (you can use the position of the lights - I assume that's what badly colourblind people do). Nor do transit maps technically need colours - you could just label the lines, or use patterns. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gywst/1407078279 https://www.flickr.com/photos/gywst/1407078279 It's completely absurd to say that colours are childish because they can help children.
    - wgrover 1mo ago
      Your comment makes me think of LabVIEW - if you're not familiar with it, it uses a visual programming language ("G") in which data flows down wires. The color of the wire indicates the wire's data type (blue for ints, orange for floats, green for bools, pink for strings) and the width of the wire indicates the dimensionality of the data (thin line = scalar, thick line = 1D array, double-thick = 2D array). The color is more than decorative or even assistive - it's essential to understanding the program.
xavdid 1mo ago
That makes sense as a personal preference for him, but it's odd for that to still be the company/project stance. Like, surely he knows he's the minority for not wanting highlighting?
- jeremyjh 1mo ago
  Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
  - tgv 1mo ago
    Apart from the fact that your comment is against the rules: please don't trivialize that quote. It has a profound meaning, and is completely out of place here.
    - jeremyjh 1mo ago
      There is a thread linked where we literally see gophers express the belief that they do not like syntax highlighting, and mock those who do - because Great Leader - born in 1956 - does not like syntax highlighting. Its called double think. https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/6STjtdoa0uIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/6STj...
mparnisari 1mo ago
that's an extremely odd explanation and it makes me think that he has some hidden PTSD. it's also insane that one person's preference trumps the rest of the world's.
- pigeonhole123 1mo ago
  He also doesn't capitalize his sentences.
  - 8-prime 1mo ago
    Maybe he was talking in private.
  - Groxx 1mo ago
    I like to alternate. or use constructions that make it ambiguous.
- zanderwohl 1mo ago
  Welcome to Go as a project.
  - tayo42 1mo ago
    Child hood trauma led to if err != nil and now the rest of us get to share that trauma? Makes slight sense I guess.
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
  - catlifeonmars 1mo ago
    Born out of C++ trauma apparently, for context
parsd 1mo ago
I understand and respect this position. I think syntax highlighting is a highly subjective matter, bordering on personal preference with regard to shell interactions, editor configurations, bindings, shortcuts, snippets, and the like. It's also... insignificant somehow, like quibbles over formatting rules that Go settled once and for all with `go fmt`. I often prefer not to enable syntax highlighting just for color. Occasionally I'd choose some minimal theme that only highlights string literals and keywords. So it has two or three colors. But some of the color schemes I see are a festival of lights where every special element of syntax has its own color. I don't understand how that is supposed to help me parse anything and why the rules are complex. The `range` keyword needs to be purple, and `chan` must be navy blue. Why exactly? And every site has a different color scheme? There is no consensus, and there shouldn't be. For a serious community-driven project like Go, dealing with the question of syntax highlighting is strange. The creators deliberately avoided the questions of IDEs and editors for Go, leaving them to the community. I think the same principle applies here.
- catlifeonmars 1mo ago
  > The creators deliberately avoided the questions of IDEs and editors for Go, leaving them to the community. I think the same principle applies here. Exactly. This is fundamentally about accessibility (in the broadest sense). Do people have opinionated screenreader settings they like to force on others too?

by treyd 1mo ago

jeremyjh 1mo ago

What is childish is holding up one guy's editor preferences as a religious sacrament when 99.9% of your readers have different preferences.

dotwaffle 1mo ago
Well, there's kind of a precedent at least... > Gofmt's style is no one's favorite, yet gofmt is everyone's favorite.
- saturn_vk 1mo ago
  That's been a major success
  - XorNot 1mo ago
    It basically revolutionized the entire industry and thank god. Opinionated standard formatting is now the default.
- poncho_romero 1mo ago
  Unlike formatting preferences, the colours I use in my editor don't effect others. That said I might not mind living in a world where everyone used the same highlighting scheme, as long as it was reasonable ;)

tester457 1mo ago

> Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods). I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals. https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3BHV6QFfIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...

IshKebab 1mo ago
That must be why traffic lights and electrical wires and transit maps are all black and white...
- abtinf 1mo ago
  That’s an interesting point. The reason traffic lights are colored is because they are showing distinct states of the same thing and the color is the means of differentiating. Same for transit maps: different routes are colored to distinguish them from other routes, which is especially useful if they overlap. But that’s not what syntax highlighting does. The equivalent of your examples would be to not highlight the syntax at all, but only use color coding to distinguish variables. The equivalent of how syntax highlighting currently works for your examples would be if the light fixture was one color, and the light pole was another, but then all the actual lights were the same color. I actually think highlighting only the variables with distinct colors could be extremely valuable. Would certainly help avoid mistakes with nested i/j loop counters. Edit to add: come to think of it, it would have been even more valuable in Go, until recently anyway. The variable color coding would expose the common loop variable instance bugs, because a programmer would be instantly puzzled by the unexpected coloring.
  - IshKebab 1mo ago
    That does exist, it's called semantic highlighting. In any case, my analogy was not perfect, but neither was Russ's! The point is it's totally normal and not "childish" to use colours to help distinguish things. Traffic lights do not technically need colours (you can use the position of the lights - I assume that's what badly colourblind people do). Nor do transit maps technically need colours - you could just label the lines, or use patterns. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gywst/1407078279 https://www.flickr.com/photos/gywst/1407078279 It's completely absurd to say that colours are childish because they can help children.
  - wgrover 1mo ago
    Your comment makes me think of LabVIEW - if you're not familiar with it, it uses a visual programming language ("G") in which data flows down wires. The color of the wire indicates the wire's data type (blue for ints, orange for floats, green for bools, pink for strings) and the width of the wire indicates the dimensionality of the data (thin line = scalar, thick line = 1D array, double-thick = 2D array). The color is more than decorative or even assistive - it's essential to understanding the program.

xavdid 1mo ago

That makes sense as a personal preference for him, but it's odd for that to still be the company/project stance. Like, surely he knows he's the minority for not wanting highlighting?

jeremyjh 1mo ago
Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
- tgv 1mo ago
  Apart from the fact that your comment is against the rules: please don't trivialize that quote. It has a profound meaning, and is completely out of place here.
  - jeremyjh 1mo ago
    There is a thread linked where we literally see gophers express the belief that they do not like syntax highlighting, and mock those who do - because Great Leader - born in 1956 - does not like syntax highlighting. Its called double think. https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/6STjtdoa0uIJ https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/6STj...

mparnisari 1mo ago

that's an extremely odd explanation and it makes me think that he has some hidden PTSD. it's also insane that one person's preference trumps the rest of the world's.

pigeonhole123 1mo ago
He also doesn't capitalize his sentences.
- 8-prime 1mo ago
  Maybe he was talking in private.
- Groxx 1mo ago
  I like to alternate. or use constructions that make it ambiguous.
zanderwohl 1mo ago
Welcome to Go as a project.
- tayo42 1mo ago
  Child hood trauma led to if err != nil and now the rest of us get to share that trauma? Makes slight sense I guess.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
- catlifeonmars 1mo ago
  Born out of C++ trauma apparently, for context

parsd 1mo ago

I understand and respect this position. I think syntax highlighting is a highly subjective matter, bordering on personal preference with regard to shell interactions, editor configurations, bindings, shortcuts, snippets, and the like. It's also... insignificant somehow, like quibbles over formatting rules that Go settled once and for all with `go fmt`. I often prefer not to enable syntax highlighting just for color. Occasionally I'd choose some minimal theme that only highlights string literals and keywords. So it has two or three colors. But some of the color schemes I see are a festival of lights where every special element of syntax has its own color. I don't understand how that is supposed to help me parse anything and why the rules are complex. The `range` keyword needs to be purple, and `chan` must be navy blue. Why exactly? And every site has a different color scheme? There is no consensus, and there shouldn't be. For a serious community-driven project like Go, dealing with the question of syntax highlighting is strange. The creators deliberately avoided the questions of IDEs and editors for Go, leaving them to the community. I think the same principle applies here.

catlifeonmars 1mo ago
> The creators deliberately avoided the questions of IDEs and editors for Go, leaving them to the community. I think the same principle applies here. Exactly. This is fundamentally about accessibility (in the broadest sense). Do people have opinionated screenreader settings they like to force on others too?