I like the concept. I don't buy all the author's personal choices, though.
I think the highlighting should serve 2 purposes: 1. help you parse the code, and 2. put more or less emphasis on some elements.
Comments have a primary role when reading someone's code, so they deserve a distinguished color by virtue of point 2 above.
Strings are sometimes difficult to parse correctly because the symbol to start them is the same to end them, so item 1 above applies.
And variable definitions have the tendency of hiding in plain sight, despite being crucial to understand a piece of code, so they match both criteria 1 and 2.
But numbers, booleans and constants can't be possibly mistaken for anything else, nor do they need to stand out more than the rest, so why highlighting them?
Deemphasizing punctuation might be a good idea: I'd probably reserve the same treatment to some common boilerplates, too, like #include in C/C++, #[derive] in Rust, etc.
Finally many languages make it hard to tell types and variables apart. Therefore I'd argue that types deserve their own coloring, obeying reason 1 above.
To add a final nitpick, the two "use" statements in the example define two symbols, "FilterType" and "Error". I think only these two words should be highlighted in blue, not the rest of the hierarchy.
I've long felt this whole concept is a waste of time. I've been using a very simple rule since shortly after I started programming: comments are green. That's it. That's the rule. Distinguish code from stuff that isn't code, and otherwise just read the damn thing. No highlighting at all would be fine too. Playing games with rainbows makes everything take more effort to read, not less. You ever notice how you do just fine parsing syntax intuitively and subconsciously as, for example, you're reading this paragraph? We already spend our entire lives training the skill of instantly understanding syntax when reading un-highlighted text.
To quibble a bit: Color choice is mostly a matter of taste, but highlighting itself is a matter of workflows. Highlighting syntax in particular just happens to be a default most people find acceptable.
In other circumstances, the user may benefit from coloring by variable data-type, or coloring by distinct variable name, or coloring by scope, etc. Often IDEs will keep the font color, and use other channels like a highlight-box around some text, or gutter-icons.
A more sensible text related to code presentation is Rougier's On the design of text editors. But I found I don't really need a lot of syntax highlighting. My preference is towards those separations:
- Code vs comments
- builtins vs other symbols
- maybe strings.
But I like to rely on whitespace (blank lines and indentations) more than colors these days.
> he suggests colouring just a few key elements, like strings, comments, and variable definitions. I don’t know if that would work for everybody, but I like the idea
I don't like this trend copying at all. The post he's referring to is probably written by someone with light sensitivity.
I like the concept. I don't buy all the author's personal choices, though.
I think the highlighting should serve 2 purposes: 1. help you parse the code, and 2. put more or less emphasis on some elements.
Comments have a primary role when reading someone's code, so they deserve a distinguished color by virtue of point 2 above.
Strings are sometimes difficult to parse correctly because the symbol to start them is the same to end them, so item 1 above applies.
And variable definitions have the tendency of hiding in plain sight, despite being crucial to understand a piece of code, so they match both criteria 1 and 2.
But numbers, booleans and constants can't be possibly mistaken for anything else, nor do they need to stand out more than the rest, so why highlighting them?
Deemphasizing punctuation might be a good idea: I'd probably reserve the same treatment to some common boilerplates, too, like #include in C/C++, #[derive] in Rust, etc.
Finally many languages make it hard to tell types and variables apart. Therefore I'd argue that types deserve their own coloring, obeying reason 1 above.
To add a final nitpick, the two "use" statements in the example define two symbols, "FilterType" and "Error". I think only these two words should be highlighted in blue, not the rest of the hierarchy.
I've long felt this whole concept is a waste of time. I've been using a very simple rule since shortly after I started programming: comments are green. That's it. That's the rule. Distinguish code from stuff that isn't code, and otherwise just read the damn thing. No highlighting at all would be fine too. Playing games with rainbows makes everything take more effort to read, not less. You ever notice how you do just fine parsing syntax intuitively and subconsciously as, for example, you're reading this paragraph? We already spend our entire lives training the skill of instantly understanding syntax when reading un-highlighted text.
> Syntax highlighting is mostly a matter of taste
To quibble a bit: Color choice is mostly a matter of taste, but highlighting itself is a matter of workflows. Highlighting syntax in particular just happens to be a default most people find acceptable.
In other circumstances, the user may benefit from coloring by variable data-type, or coloring by distinct variable name, or coloring by scope, etc. Often IDEs will keep the font color, and use other channels like a highlight-box around some text, or gutter-icons.
A more sensible text related to code presentation is Rougier's On the design of text editors. But I found I don't really need a lot of syntax highlighting. My preference is towards those separations:
- Code vs comments - builtins vs other symbols - maybe strings.
But I like to rely on whitespace (blank lines and indentations) more than colors these days.
[0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06030
> he suggests colouring just a few key elements, like strings, comments, and variable definitions. I don’t know if that would work for everybody, but I like the idea
I don't like this trend copying at all. The post he's referring to is probably written by someone with light sensitivity.
I kind of like it as it shifts the focus from syntax to logic. In futherance of that framing, some changes I'd include
- make all literals the same color
- make uses of defined items colored as a lighter color of the definition
- still color conditionals and loops
- use JS to have hovering over an item to highlight all other uses