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Comment by klrr | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it annoying to program without syntax highlight? Or is it just some false rumor I've heard that acme doesn't have that feature... it looks a lot like wmii. I have to try it though, emacs and vim really sucks, too bloated for my taste, I'm still not that hardcore that I use ed for programming so I'm searching for an simple, minimal and correct alternative to emacs and vim....

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For a number of years in the mid-1990s I switched between Borland's IDE when using DOS and vi (not vim) and later sam when using Unix. The fact that one world had highlighting and the other didn't have it had no effect on my productivity, at least not one in favor of highlighting. It never occurred to me that I should miss it on Unix or that it was annoying not to have it. They were just different tools that did different things.

I know lots of people have strong feelings about this highlighting or that, but honestly, just try going without it for a week or two. I bet you'll find it is not that big a deal after all.

Okey, thanks. I'll try it. If I feel that it ain't really for me I think I'll just write my own editor. :)

I prefer no syntax highlighting because I wear glasses, and the resulting chromatic aberration makes it difficult to read.

My glasses are likely stronger than yours [1] and I've never had a problem with chromatic aberrations. Are you nearsighted, farsighted, or something else?

[1] (How strong? Well, the current frames I'm wearing aren't the frames I initially chose; they're the frames I chose out of the set of frames that have the earpieces connected far enough back to allow them to fold closed given the thickness of the lenses I wear. The fact nobody warned me about this when I picked out my first set of frames indicates it likely doesn't happen a whole lot.)

I doubt the dispersion is caused by any specific properties of my lenses but rather by how my preferred desk arrangement makes me often look off the lens' axes. I could get contacts, but since reading programs is the only time it bothers me, and I otherwise like the rainbows, I just tell all my programs to show normal monochromatic text.

It varies from language to language I'm sure but in C there's enough syntax and sigils and what not that it's easy to parse visually without colorized hints.

Just keep your code window small enough that it doesn't make your eyes glaze over.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I have no problems using C or Java without highlighting, but I wouldn't want to use Python or even Fortran without it, there's just not enough guidance for my taste.

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