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I usually ignore syntax highlighting. I can't see it well because it's tiny, and because the "designers" usually chose colors that are tough to distinguish, and sometimes very difficult to see at all.

For instance, the default console colors in Ubuntu are TERRIBLE (maybe for everyone). The output of 'ls' uses blue letters on a black background for some type of file, and I literally cannot see those. Ditto for some errors in Emacs (e.g., trying to exit w/o saving a file). That output is invisible.

If you are an engineer and decide to do something with color in your UI, please get some designer help and listen.



I wrote a small DSL editor before and I had to fight extremely hard to get a theme that made the semantic highlighting legible.

I like pretty things too, but they also need to be functional.


My vision is very good and I can confirm, the default Ubuntu terminal colors are horrible.




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