On Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:02:20 +0530 Weldon Goree <[email protected]> wrote:
> Depends on the language, I guess. I do a lot of stuff in Forth (robotics > is a hobby of mine) and I'm not even sure what "syntax highlighting" > would be in that case -- I guess parsing words could be one color and > non-parsing words another? I like it in verilog, though. In LISP I'm > kind of indifferent; it's much more important that an editor can balance > sexps than anything else. I can't agree more that the need for syntax hightlighting directly depends on the language-design. For instance, it's very hard to develop Java, C-Objective or C# without an IDE, as there are hundreds of utility-functions, objects and what not you can't keep in your head all the time. C is a prime example for a language where this is not endemic, given the language was designed to be simple and isn't stuffed with unnecessary cruft, but leaves you the decision which library to use. > One thing I do like in any language is having comments displayed in a > distinct color. I find that very useful. Also string literals. I guess I > prefer a "scanner highlighting" to "parser highlighting", if that's a > meaningful distinction. Yes, highlighting comments makes sense, as even the article suggests, but this is not a central issue if you know how to encapsulate your comments: /* (...) (...) (...) */ is more error-prone and hard to read than /* * (...) * (...) * (...) */ once the comments get longer. Cheers FRIGN -- FRIGN <[email protected]>
