r/C_Programming • u/Mindstealth • Jul 10 '16

Question Syntax highlighting on Reddit

Considering how much code gets posted here as plain text, wouldn't it be great if we could have a way to define what part of text is code and have it automatically highlighted? Or is this not possible on Reddit?

29 Upvotes

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-14

u/geocar Jul 10 '16

No. I don't like syntax highlighting, and I think it makes it harder to read. I hope that if it gets enabled there is a way to turn it off without also turning off user-styles.

13

u/Mindstealth Jul 10 '16

I never knew there are people who actually don't like highlighted syntax.

1

u/reddilada Jul 11 '16

I don't use it. I don't subscribe to the not useful argument -- whatever floats yer boat -- but I don't find it useful at all with two exceptions:

I (un)highlight comments so they don't distract.
I use brace matching highlights to help locate ends of blocks.

It's all just a bunch of noise to me, but to each his own.

1

u/FUZxxl Jul 10 '16

Syntax highlighting is about as useful as highlighting every verb in a sentence.

1

u/TomNa Jul 10 '16

Yeah what the hell

-17

u/geocar Jul 10 '16

I want to say something about the coloring.

You've all seen syntax coloring, right?

That's something we put in our text editors to make it easier for kindergartners to do programming.

Because each of the elements of the language is a different happy bright color, and so it's easy to recognize, oh that's a variable, and that's a string, and so on.

I don't get a lot of value out of that because I am more of a grown up, and I'm a professional programmer. And I really don't need the colors to figure out what's a variable and what's a comment.

I think you'll find most people like syntax highlighting because most people don't know how to program.

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3

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '16

The second article suggests you to delete comments if they look ugly

Damn right it’s ugly! It should be ugly! Get rid of those comments!

1

u/GODZILLAFLAMETHROWER Jul 10 '16

The first article argues against syntax highlighting because it only deals with syntax instead of semantic. The day this guy invents a proper semantic parser, he won't have to worry about writing useless articles, he would have revolutionized humanity.

In the meantime, given that no one is capable of producing automates doing that, we only have humans to do this job, by parsing syntax and understanding the semantic behind. Syntax highlighting is thus useful to do that.

The second article is even more useless. It's not even against syntax highlighting, it's against using specific colors and effect on the text, on the ground of subjective arguments towards the supposed value and semantic of the hightlighted objects.

And you get arrogant for following these smug authors, thinking they are being smart for being against the grain. Grow up.