Comment by Zababa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zababa | Hacker News Reader

> And need I remind anybody that you cannot buy a monochrome screen anymore? Syntax-coloring editors are the default. Why not make color part of the syntax? Why not tell the compiler about protected code regions by putting them on a framed light gray background? Or provide hints about likely and unlikely code paths with a green or red background tint?

I'm colorblind, please never do that. Syntax highlighting is fine since it's another way to help, but color having some kind of importance so that pink code and violet code run differently would be hell for me.

Edit: something else: color looks different depending on your computer. Consider how many complaints I already see here about people developing UI for extra wide monitors while most people are on 15 inches screen, that would be terrible. Don't even get me started about arguments on "is this blue, blueish green or green?". Colors are way more subjective than what people seem to think.

> For some reason computer people are so conservative that we still find it more uncompromisingly important for our source code to be compatible with a Teletype ASR-33 terminal and its 1963-vintage ASCII table than it is for us to be able to express our intentions clearly.

And no new letters have been added to English or French lately. They seem to be doing just fine. Typing those new symbols would be hell if keyboards are not designed for it.

I can and have resurrected busted systems with a serial interface, sed, and ed. This is not fun as it is. It would be much suckier if each line of code were subject to out-of-band context such that it wasn’t obvious when having access to only the text.

I see negative value in representing code as anything other than text. Every time I've seen an entity try to do this, I've seen programmers come up with a text-based alternative that compiles to whatever janky format the other party thinks is clever this month.

Lots of e-ink screens are monochrome. There was recently a thread here about a big one that seemed intended for desktops. I often use my phone in monochrome for various silly reasons.

I like having my code coloured, but if the colour was part of the code I'd lose the control I currently have. I'm not against that in principle, but if it was done in a way I didn't like it would really put me off.

The best uses, imho, like rainbow brackets, are applied after the fact. It would be a nightmare to have to match red brackets to red etc.

Be glad you don't code in one of the new age async languages. They love coloring their functions.

Yeah, I'm a blind coder and having color matter like this does not sound like fun.

blue int end blue red main end red green open parentheses …

Colorforth not only does this but solved the colorblind problem by switching fonts.

I don't think colorforth "solved the colorblind problem" considering it has almost no adoption. Does anyone except Chuck Moore uses it? It has a fallback for colorblind people, which is better than nothing but is still terrible.

The current way, plain text with everyone free to use syntax highlighters that change the color, font, or anything of the text is fine and works very well. I've heard about AST-based source of truth, and I think this could fix syntax mistakes while still allowing people to edit plain text as they wish (and could also simplify visual programming tools. Maybe unlock a smooth transition from low-code tools to regular code?).

If something is terrible then comparatively you must have a better solution around.

> Syntax highlighting is fine since it's another way to help, but color having some kind of importance so that pink code and violet code run differently would be hell for me.

It's not a colorblind thing; that's just a terrible idea even if you nominally can distinguish the colors. (Citation: personal experience.)

"And no new letters have been added to English or French lately."

Counterpoint: €

That's a symbol that refers to "euro" or "euros", the currency. "euro" or "euros" are still written with our lovely 26 letters.

Ok, symbol, not a letter. But it is still commonly used in everyday work, much like $ or £. People who do accounting etc. would be very unhappy if they could not produce it on a computer keyboard.

So, in practice, you need to support it and it is a relatively new addition. Most other symbols are 200+ years old.

Further in this point; even without the subjective warts, the composability of colors would leave a lot of confusion. Blue-green, or green-blue?

No new symbols in english? How about emoji?

I think emojis are mostly a passing trend, just like at some point people loved to decorate the first letter of a book, article or paragraph. They're solving a problem (show the emotion on your face when the only thing you have is written text) but they are one of the many solutions, and will probably be replaced some day.

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