Thanks for bumping this. I had intended to respond. There is a fundamental difference between reading English prose (or whatever your native language is) and code; prose is read as a continuous stream while code is often read in a random access manner. An interesting point here is that natural language writing like reference manuals actually do often include things similar to syntax highlighting where key points are bolded, underlined or italicised in a manner broader than is common in prose.
The other point here is that syntax highlighting is not restricted to altering the colours of parts of speech. For example, I use semantic highlighting (what I jokingly call Hawaiian style) that colours labels based on their hash (my theme also renders keywords in an intensity diminished form since they are largely punctuation in my reading). This helps me recognise patterns in code much more quickly. Is it a crutch, sure, but until you're editing with butterfly wing flaps, we're all using crutches. Dan On Sat, 2018-11-24 at 07:09 -0600, Sam Whited wrote: > On Fri, Nov 23, 2018, at 17:06, Jay Ts wrote: > > > > Nowadays I use vim > > because there are a few nice things about it that aren't in vi. At > > least, > > vim is ok after you turn off syntax highlighting and all the other > > newbie > > crutches. :-P Seriously, how many people can't read or write in > > English (or > > their native language) if the verbs, nouns, and prepositions are > > the same > > color? I don't get it. > Okay, I'll bite: Anyone can still read code without syntax > highlighting, it doesn't provide any information that's not already > there. It just provides another dimension of visibility to that > information so that you can make certain judgements quicker. If the > compiler gives you a worthless error message and you don't know why > something isn't working, you might be able to see at a glance that a > multi-line string isn't terminated when everything is in string color > instead of scrolling up several hundred lines wondering why it said > the file ended early. It's not a crutch, as it probably doesn't help > you if you can't walk already. > > —Sam > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
