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Comment by yankcrime | Hacker News Reader

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

[..]

Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods. I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals." - Rob Pike

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A great example of how very smart capable people can express silly ideas wherein they justify personal preference with bad logic.

https://ppig.org/papers/2015-ppig-26th-dimitri/

Code isn't arithmetic nor prose and the majority usage of highlighting is because people intuitively grasp that life is easier with highlighting.

It is perfectly ok to have different preferences but one must be careful not to elevate a preference to a law built upon sand not bedrock.

I hypothesised that syntax highlighting just had to provide some tangible benefits just because of how it allows the brain to process lots of information with a quick glance. After having witnessed a few geniuses work and swear by no syntax highlighting, I started to doubt my thesis, so thank you for linking the paper.

Maybe some people just perceive the syntax highlighting as cognitive overload although it's meant to achieve the exact opposite.

Maybe They want to try fixing syntax errors to old school way printed out fanfold paper and highlighter pens.

narrator voice : They do not want to do that.

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