A case against syntax highlighting (2007)

> It encourages you to skim through code rather than understand it.

Personally I find it allows me to skim through code so I can understand it.

I'm not generally interested in syntactic overhead. I care about the names and structures of things. Occasionally I care about the type of things, but less often than I care about what I can actually do to that thing.

Comparing code to natural language is dishonest. Code is nothing like that. In code, the structure and exact wording is important, while you probably wouldn't notice if a paragraph of fiction was rearranged and had words substituted with synonyms.