Comment by iamsaitam
1 year ago
I think purism is a slippery slope for experienced people, I too suffer from this to a certaint extent. It's natural to fight change as you get older and it's part of the struggle to change your behavior and adapt to the changing times.
Short comment regarding syntax highlighting, unless you have some impairement, I think everyone benefits from this. It's something that helps you recognize patterns much faster and you can skim through the code way faster than without.
I don't benefit from syntax highlighting and don't see how anyone does. It's pretty, but doesn't convey useful information that isn't already right there in the syntax itself.
Keywords vs. variables vs. functions <-- these all look the same.
Function arguments vs global functions/variables vs local variables. Although maybe not technically syntax highlighting many IDEs can do this. Ie. Making non-local information local.
It's syntax emphasis. When skimming it's easier to find a variable if variables are somewhat distinct in colour and so on.
Besides, things being a bit pretty is nice.
It's not just purism. IDEs tend to have workflow problems that distract from focusing on the code. I'm increasingly using Codium (open source VScode) but there are many papercuts that prevent vim-like workflow that integrates well with shell and the filesystem. Also vim's "dumb" autocomplete goes quite far, especially when used with the well thought out split-panel implementation.
IDEs tend implement features quite ad-hoc without thinking how they compose which limits the workflow to certain style that's not always very ideal.