https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/hJHCAaiL0so/m/kG3B...
The reason traffic lights are colored is because they are showing distinct states of the same thing and the color is the means of differentiating.
Same for transit maps: different routes are colored to distinguish them from other routes, which is especially useful if they overlap.
But that’s not what syntax highlighting does.
The equivalent of your examples would be to not highlight the syntax at all, but only use color coding to distinguish variables.
The equivalent of how syntax highlighting currently works for your examples would be if the light fixture was one color, and the light pole was another, but then all the actual lights were the same color.
I actually think highlighting only the variables with distinct colors could be extremely valuable. Would certainly help avoid mistakes with nested i/j loop counters.
Edit to add: come to think of it, it would have been even more valuable in Go, until recently anyway. The variable color coding would expose the common loop variable instance bugs, because a programmer would be instantly puzzled by the unexpected coloring.
In any case, my analogy was not perfect, but neither was Russ's! The point is it's totally normal and not "childish" to use colours to help distinguish things. Traffic lights do not technically need colours (you can use the position of the lights - I assume that's what badly colourblind people do). Nor do transit maps technically need colours - you could just label the lines, or use patterns.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gywst/1407078279
It's completely absurd to say that colours are childish because they can help children.
Despite its huge size and it installing several services that constantly run in the background, it's still one of my favorite "languages" of all time. It's the only one I've ever seen people going from never having programmed before to making simple but meaningful contributions in within a single day.
I wonder if traffic lights were invented today, would it be just one light changing colour?
> Gofmt was written to reduce the number of pointless discussions about code formatting. It succeeded admirably. I'm sad to say it had no effect whatsoever on the number of pointless discussions about syntax highlighting, or as I prefer to call it, spitzensparken blinkelichtzen.
> 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.
I sincerely hope Rob Pike was being sarcastic/ironic, because otherwise, he sounds insufferable
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians...
Oh come on, I like syntax highlights, but this is not "insufferable". It's just opinions expressed strongly, with probably some tounge-in-cheek
"Everyone who uses syntax highlighting is a child"
I mean, maybe he was genuinely trying to make a joke, but I'm well past the point of assuming random strangers are joking when they're being offensively dumb.