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Comment by panic | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a middle ground here. Most syntax highlighting uses extremely saturated clashing colors. The feeling you get for the "texture" of the code is useful, but it can make the code hard to read all at once. Using a more toned-down theme brings back some of that legibility without giving up the benefits of syntax highlighting.

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> Most syntax highlighting uses extremely saturated clashing colors

Really? Why is it then that we have such popularity in color schemes like Solarized[1]? Or the much older zenburn? I'll agree that there are a lot of bad color schemes out there, but that's because anyone can create a color scheme. There's no certification process to create one.

Back in the era where people "themed" their window manager (GNOME, Kwin, Windows, and even OSX had hacks for this), look at all of the really gaudy window themes that were created. Is this an argument against all theming of windows?

Is judicious use of Comic Sans an argument against fonts? Of course not.

[1] http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

I you are using an "Angry Fruit Salad" color scheme, like the example in the article, it's yer own damn fault for not investing 10 minutes to find something more sublime.

http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

Best color scheme I have found, I use it for everything. I can't even imagine opening up some of my code in notepad or vi(m) with no syntax highlighting and actually trying to do a productive amount of work. This suggestion seems absolutely ridiculous if your syntax highlighting is sane.

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