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Comment by wintrli8 | Hacker News Reader

I envy those who can use dark colour schemes. It hurts my eyes for some reason.

Some reason = probably strong myopia or astigmatism.

I have those issues and with dark themes (or just in the night when I’m tired) my eye’s lens tend to open so widely that my vision becomes blurred because the focus point of my eyes is now behind my glasses.

If you support contact lenses, it’s an issue they can effectively fix because the focus point can never be behind your correction lens.

A few more explanations by Rob Pike, featuring words such as “normal trichromat human pigment spectra” and “scattered light”: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2020/09/color-blindness-i...

Can confirm the potential astigmatism reason, which I have, and also struggle with dark themes. For some odd reason, maybe there is an expert here, crisp light shapes on a dark background make it either super obvious to a person that the shapes are malformed or it forces their eyes to strain more to compensate.

Another astigmatism person here. I cannot get on with dark colour schemes at all. Every so often I give it a go, in my IDE or desktop theme, and then quickly switch it back. It's not that it's too dark per se, but it feels like the text is just 'floating about' with no real anchor to the page, which is a bit of an issue when you are trying to code or write documentation.

It’s good to know that I am not alone. There’s this general aspect of not being cool when one is using light theme. How do we tell them that it’s not by choice? I really like the look of someone working in that dark theme and tried a lot to force myself into it only to fail miserably and come back to light theme.

Most of the time I use a dark theme. With some self-directed sarcasm: I’m a pretty cool guy; I was bullied and I spent the next 20 years learning how to cool. Like my life depended on it. From the amount of time spent multiplied by my dedication I’ve done an ~okay job. idk, as a example: I have a tall, scary-looking high-tech dirtbike on street plates and an Italian two-piece suit of fine gray wool and I show up to work on that. Without appearing to try hard.

So I think I have wasted enough of my life on trying very hard to be cool to claim the credentials to say:

What is truly not cool is people whose status and social signaling revolves around “dArK tHeMeS aRe CoOl” and turn their little noses up at people getting f…ing work done. Which is cool.

:sunglasses_emoji:

Bro, nobody cares what color scheme you use, if you're confident about how you feel about it. I toggle between dark and light myself in vscode, depending on how I feel, really like the dark and light versions of the Github theme myself.

I had thought this to be true, but in certain startups with a certain culture, using a light theme will make you look like Dinosaurus who's not able to keep up with the latest tech trends. I know it's dumb, but it is reality in some places.

That's toxic environment. You should quit that company.

Unfortunately people do care and look down on others based on color theme. Just as some people look down on others not wearing a rolex. Tech is full of blowhards just as everywhere else. Techies using light themes aren't synth wave futuristic a-poc hacker material.

On the internet some start up guys were bragging about rejecting a candidate because he wore a collared shirt to the interview. That it showed he would never "get it".

I think you may have some valid points here. I use specs, have been using for past 8-9 years. I remember using dark colour schemes as long as I can remember and don’t remember exactly when this issue started. Maybe, 1-2 years. I have two specs, different design but same power. I will experiment with the other one to see if that helps.

Currently I’m using the light version of light owl theme. Still experimenting to see it I can find better ones. I am fond of yellowish backgrounds though, like the one here at HN or the one present in ACME.

This... makes SO much sense! I really started preferring dark themes for my various tools after I got LASIK'ed, and never made the connection :)

I have astigmatism and otherwise almost perfect eyesight. No issues with dark themes. If anything, I feel the letters washing a bit out is better than the background washing everything out.

I have a harder time reading the text I'm typing here on the white background when taking off my glasses, than in my dark IDE.

Interesting point. I experience the same, and realized that my glasses are getting old - probably need new ones. Maybe parent doesn’t even have glasses?

For this reason I prefer not-pitch-black dark themes. E.g monokai is a bit brighter background and is thus more comfy.

I have both myopia and astigmatism. I prefer dark themes but even my dark themes have a light dark background compared to those punkish very dark backgrounds.

I don't like them because all I can see is a reflection of my big ugly face staring back at me. Who needs to see THAT for eight hours a day?

If you have an anti-glare screen, that's not an issue.

Maybe a good reason to paint some makeup. As another commenter said itt, “Bro, nobody cares what color scheme you use, if you're confident about how you feel about it.”

I wouldn't say it hurts my eyes, but as soon as I open the IDE and a big black box shows up I feel depressed already. I usually just use what is default anyway. For example, Visual Studio looks weird to me in dark mode, but Visual Studio Code looks weird to me in light mode.

I get that with dark themes, but specifically ones with low contrast.

I really couldn't use Github's dark theme when it was first released because everything looked blurry. Their new "high contrast" dark theme is a great improvement.

I switch between a variety of middle-value color schemes. Like QB64 but with less saturated color overall and a bit less contrast, plus some red, green, and gold or orange hue backgrounds thrown in for variety. The dark themes or the light ones never work that well for me.

I've started creating my own (only for Geany so far) because there just aren't many like that.

Try a low contrast theme rather than specifically light or dark. I like zenburn.

It is too contrasting, the letters are too bright against too dark background. There are less contrasting themes then Dracula.

Why the envy? I guess it looks cooler.

Why envy? I just dislike them. Dark theme only just sends me elsewhere.

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