I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong
Key Takeaways
- Excessive syntax highlighting makes everything blend together, rendering the tool ineffective.
- Effective highlighting relies on a limited color palette that the user can memorize for quick lookups.
- The author's proposed solution is a minimalist theme using an absolute minimum of colors (e.g., four).
- Highlights should be reserved for less frequent, structurally important elements like constants and top-level definitions.
- Language keywords and highly frequent elements like variables and function calls should generally not be highlighted.
The author contends that many color themes for syntax highlighting are flawed because they use too many bright colors, causing everything to blend together and negating the tool's benefit of making code easier to read and navigate. When everything is highlighted, nothing truly stands out, making it difficult to quickly locate specific elements like function definitions. The core utility of syntax highlighting lies in two lookups: identifying an element by its color or searching for a type of element by its associated color, which is impossible if the user cannot remember the scheme. The solution proposed is radical minimalism, suggesting a color palette so small it can be memorized instantly, like the author's four-color theme (Green for strings, Purple for constants, Yellow for comments, Light blue for definitions). Furthermore, the author advises against highlighting ubiquitous elements like variables and function calls, or language keywords, and instead recommends focusing highlights on less frequent but structurally important elements like constants and top-level definitions.
