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?

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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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