<story><title>Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)</title><url>https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1871406</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zababa</author><text>&amp;gt; And need I remind anybody that you cannot buy a monochrome screen anymore?   Syntax-coloring editors are the default. Why not make color part of the syntax? Why not tell the compiler about protected code regions by putting them on a framed light gray background? Or provide hints about likely and unlikely code paths with a green or red background tint?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m colorblind, please never do that. Syntax highlighting is fine since it&amp;#x27;s another way to help, but color having some kind of importance so that pink code and violet code run differently would be hell for me.&lt;p&gt;Edit: something else: color looks different depending on your computer. Consider how many complaints I already see here about people developing UI for extra wide monitors while most people are on 15 inches screen, that would be terrible. Don&amp;#x27;t even get me started about arguments on &amp;quot;is this blue, blueish green or green?&amp;quot;. Colors are way more subjective than what people seem to think.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For some reason computer people are so conservative that we still find it more uncompromisingly important for our source code to be compatible with a Teletype ASR-33 terminal and its 1963-vintage ASCII table than it is for us to be able to express our intentions clearly.&lt;p&gt;And no new letters have been added to English or French lately. They seem to be doing just fine. Typing those new symbols would be hell if keyboards are not designed for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kstrauser</author><text>I can and have resurrected busted systems with a serial interface, sed, and ed. This is not fun as it is. It would be much suckier if each line of code were subject to out-of-band context such that it wasn’t obvious when having access to only the text.&lt;p&gt;I see negative value in representing code as anything other than text. Every time I&amp;#x27;ve seen an entity try to do this, I&amp;#x27;ve seen programmers come up with a text-based alternative that compiles to whatever janky format the other party thinks is clever this month.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)</title><url>https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1871406</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Zababa</author><text>&amp;gt; And need I remind anybody that you cannot buy a monochrome screen anymore?   Syntax-coloring editors are the default. Why not make color part of the syntax? Why not tell the compiler about protected code regions by putting them on a framed light gray background? Or provide hints about likely and unlikely code paths with a green or red background tint?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m colorblind, please never do that. Syntax highlighting is fine since it&amp;#x27;s another way to help, but color having some kind of importance so that pink code and violet code run differently would be hell for me.&lt;p&gt;Edit: something else: color looks different depending on your computer. Consider how many complaints I already see here about people developing UI for extra wide monitors while most people are on 15 inches screen, that would be terrible. Don&amp;#x27;t even get me started about arguments on &amp;quot;is this blue, blueish green or green?&amp;quot;. Colors are way more subjective than what people seem to think.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For some reason computer people are so conservative that we still find it more uncompromisingly important for our source code to be compatible with a Teletype ASR-33 terminal and its 1963-vintage ASCII table than it is for us to be able to express our intentions clearly.&lt;p&gt;And no new letters have been added to English or French lately. They seem to be doing just fine. Typing those new symbols would be hell if keyboards are not designed for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Y_Y</author><text>Lots of e-ink screens are monochrome. There was recently a thread here about a big one that seemed intended for desktops. I often use my phone in monochrome for various silly reasons.&lt;p&gt;I like having my code coloured, but if the colour was part of the code I&amp;#x27;d lose the control I currently have. I&amp;#x27;m not against that in principle, but if it was done in a way I didn&amp;#x27;t like it would really put me off.&lt;p&gt;The best uses, imho, like rainbow brackets, are applied after the fact. It would be a nightmare to have to match red brackets to red etc.</text></comment>