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Comment by morebetterer | Hacker News Reader

I don't even want color and terminal graphics done goodly. I code with two monochrome terminals on the screen using vim and the command line.

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Not everyone is you. While I agree that flashy graphics are silly in the command line, I find color-based highlighting to be quite useful.

Thanks for sharing!

As an undergrad, I had a 14.4 kbps modem, and an amber WYSE terminal. With that, I was able to do contract work. It reminded me of the amber monitor I had on my Apple II ten years before. A solid phosphor CRT with no shadow mask is a fine thing.

Colors on a modern LCD are great too; give it a chance!

I have a soft spot for those short-lived X-terminals as well. The golden age of computing.

Colors are great for web browsing, don't get me wrong. Just not near my code!

I contracted at Nortel in the mid 1990's. In my cube I somehow acquired a Sun Sparcstation 20 that nobody was using, and found an NCD black-and-white (or was that one grayscale?) X terminal on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust. I found an image for it somewhere, and set it up to TFTP boot from the SS20 (which was running Red Hat Linux) to a login prompt (XDM). It was a nice little setup.

I bet it was. Well done.

A couple of years ago I was just about to throw out all my O'Reilly X Window/Motif books from 20 years ago and when I landed a contract to update a K&R C based Motif system running on 32-bit Solaris connected to - of course - Sybase. It felt like I travelled back in time.

Old code never dies.

I have X/Window/Motif O'Reilly's from more than 20 years ago which are still shrink wrapped together. I've just been carrying them from place to place.

Must be worth a fortune by now ...

You don't use syntax highlighting?

No, never had a need for it.

At the risk of getting downvoted myself, I wonder why all of your comments are getting downvoted. Is it such a terrible opinion that it doesn't even belong on HN? A lot of people turn off syntax highlighting. It can be legitimately distracting, and it messes up tooling.

I was asked a question and provided an answer. So I don't care for syntax highlighting or colors in my editor and command line - big deal. I am not imposing my view on others.

When working with a command line one wants npm or any command to run as quickly as possible. Any graphics that slow operation of the command should be an opt-in, not an opt-out.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but some people prefer to suppress others' opinion.

Making vehement categorical statements about matters of taste is an old flamewar thing on programming message boards. I'm guessing the downvoters don't want that trope on HN. If so, I have to agree with them, because such discussion is basically never substantive.

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