We should organise a study of our own: does syntax highlighting help or hinder and does the answer change based on your level of ADHD traits.
Could be quite interesting!
Could be quite interesting!
I find myself tired out really quickly by a lack of syntax highlighting.
With syntax highlighting, I feel like I am not really reading the code anymore, but instead just registering the patterns and parsing the color tokens.
I think the most important aspect for me, is that I don't spend time reading where a token starts and ends. Ex.: If I wanna check the function name, I just have to read the only yellow thing in around this area.
I can register the tokens on a whole page in seconds, if the code isn't too dense. I just tried the same with syntax highlighting disabled and would say that I took about twice as long to parse the entire page. (I used a different, but similar file from a microcontroller HAL)
After reading this I implemented a code theme based primarily around typographic variation like weight rather than color. It uses only two colors (black and deep purple) in two weights and one italic each. I have pretty severe adhd and it's hard to judge but after using it for a few months I think this is better for me. Previously I had been using solarized light for nearly a decade for probably similar reasons.
Nano emacs was created by the author of that paper and its default themes are based on it, if you want to try it without committing to hand-rolling a theme. Personally I found that one too "light" (typographically, not color) but I also have relatively poor vision and like a large and heavy font.
There is a short talk (6min) from EmacsConf 2021 where the creator of Nano Emacs talks about his reasons for designing a simpler interface, I found it really interesting:
While skimming code (i.e., most of the time), syntax highlighting is useful. But it may be also useful to turn it off occasionally, to read some parts more thoroughly.