Extending the claim to computer science in the subtitle is really the icing on the cake.
The whole article is pretty out there, trying to portray a 5% caricature as representative of a large group of people. Of course, they did pick a good subject for that purpose…
“I judge them, sure, but I also pity them. Like, do they even know about syntax highlighting?”
I never understand how most make comments barely visible (even for me still having relatively good eyesight). I mean they’re like the most important part of code, for me anyways. Dozens of high-contrast colors for every keyword, then 0 contrast for comments against the background…
I’m so glad I’m an engineer, not one of these “coders”. This article makes that sound like a pretty awful profession. Also, one imagines a person who saunters about judging co-workers for having a plain colour scheme to be excellent fun at parties.
A portion of this story does cover the “culture” surrounding dev tools and setups but most of it makes me want to sarcastically suggest that lobste.rs add an editorial category of tags and tag this author-mostly-clueless.
Perhaps this is just the disdain I feel for having stewed in far too many programming subreddits, Orange Website, and of course lobste.rs, then watching a reporter (a “"civilian”“, a ”“normal person”“) discover Programmers Having Opinions, especially About Aesthetics.
a lot of it seems to be a matter of personal aesthetics - tried all of those out, and eventually decided desert256 was the most pleasant to me, but they were fairly similar schemes. certainly closer to each other than to some of the other higher-contrast schemes i’ve liked like denim, vividchalk, northsky and vibrantink
My anecdotal observation over the course of my career has been that color schemes are intensely personal for some people, while others don’t really seem to mind.
I tend to work across a night->day change, so I like to have 2 color schemes: a dark, low-contrast scheme for nighttime (when a brighter scheme would hurt my eyes) and a lighter, high-contrast scheme for when my office is brightly lit and I have difficulty reading the other scheme. Fortunately configuring and toggling between these things is an absolute breeze in emacs!
Which daytime/light theme do you prefer? I’m using the included “tango” theme; last time I looked around it didn’t seem like emacs was spoilt for choice.
I mean, I really like Solarized and use it almost exclusively, but holy hell that’s a bold claim in the title.
Extending the claim to computer science in the subtitle is really the icing on the cake.
The whole article is pretty out there, trying to portray a 5% caricature as representative of a large group of people. Of course, they did pick a good subject for that purpose…
It’s enough make me switch to
acmeand add grumpy Rob Pike quotes to all my emails.Haha. I was tempted to respond with one but had to restrain myself.
I think Cynthia “color brewer” Brewer is a bigger deal.
Also, lol at the use of “bespoke” in the article, which is possibly the opposite of what Solarized represents.
Moof!
Indeed!
As a person with super shitty eyesight I’ve noticed that Solarized is probably the worst color scheme I’ve ever used.
Designers - don’t forget about those of us who need a little extra contrast :)
I have good eyesight and I still find it a terrible color scheme. It’s just trendy, it’s not objectively “good” on any level.
Try gruvbox, the most important color scheme in computing history.
Gruvbox does look a ton better. If I wasn’t so lazy I might switch from my default Emacs scheme to this!
For Emacs, I find darktooth to be a nice gruvbox-based color scheme with enough contrast (ymmv). Plus it’s a few keystrokes away on MELPA.
Sweet! I’ve grabbed it and am using it at the moment. So far, I’m annoyed by the lack of contrast in org-mode, but otherwise seems good.
clarification: the dates in org-mode. Other links are fine. So, maybe this is ok!
I never understand how most make comments barely visible (even for me still having relatively good eyesight). I mean they’re like the most important part of code, for me anyways. Dozens of high-contrast colors for every keyword, then 0 contrast for comments against the background…
It tells a lot about the person who made the color scheme; the only comments in their code are probably disabled debug code.
Same, it’s far too low-contrast for me.
EDIT: and it gets substantially worse if (for some reason), you’re stuck with a less-than-amazing display.
I’m pretty sure black-on-white or white-on-black is the most iconic and most-used color scheme in computing.
Don’t forget green on black!
Or, my favorite, amber on black!
The most important color schemes in computing history!
Ugh I forgot white-on-blue. C64 forever!
There’s gray-on-black as well, though I don’t particularly like DOS.
I’m so glad I’m an engineer, not one of these “coders”. This article makes that sound like a pretty awful profession. Also, one imagines a person who saunters about judging co-workers for having a plain colour scheme to be excellent fun at parties.
A portion of this story does cover the “culture” surrounding dev tools and setups but most of it makes me want to sarcastically suggest that lobste.rs add an editorial category of tags and tag this
author-mostly-clueless.Perhaps this is just the disdain I feel for having stewed in far too many programming subreddits, Orange Website, and of course lobste.rs, then watching a reporter (a “"civilian”“, a ”“normal person”“) discover Programmers Having Opinions, especially About Aesthetics.
Opinions about aesthetics, you say?
I’d love to see a real study conducted about the readability of various color schemes, including Desert, Solarized, and Zenburn.
a lot of it seems to be a matter of personal aesthetics - tried all of those out, and eventually decided desert256 was the most pleasant to me, but they were fairly similar schemes. certainly closer to each other than to some of the other higher-contrast schemes i’ve liked like denim, vividchalk, northsky and vibrantink
My aesthetics is minimalism.
Didn’t you just say it was “one of the most meticulously developed” with “design rigor”?
No there aren’t.
There are figurative holy wars fought over the meaning of the word ‘literal’ though ?
I’ve seen them mutating to literal, in the metaphoric meaning of the word.
My anecdotal observation over the course of my career has been that color schemes are intensely personal for some people, while others don’t really seem to mind.
I tend to work across a night->day change, so I like to have 2 color schemes: a dark, low-contrast scheme for nighttime (when a brighter scheme would hurt my eyes) and a lighter, high-contrast scheme for when my office is brightly lit and I have difficulty reading the other scheme. Fortunately configuring and toggling between these things is an absolute breeze in emacs!
Which daytime/light theme do you prefer? I’m using the included “tango” theme; last time I looked around it didn’t seem like emacs was spoilt for choice.
I’ve got 2 that I’ve customized, they look like this: http://imgur.com/a/ZLJXQ
(they are here: https://github.com/yaaase/emacs.d/tree/master/themes)
I get the impression the article is a really subtle Onion-like parody, but I can’t tell for sure.
Random apropos cartoon: https://cdn.ampproject.org/i/www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161003_a19849-690.jpg
Caption: “everybody has a headache since we switched to solar.”
Err, what? I think you mean “any green on black colour scheme”.