Forum comments in chronological order

Anonymous
Wed 2-Jul-2014 18:05

I chanced upon this article while searching for *scientific* studies about the pros and cons of syntax highlighting. I didn't find such studies, but kudos for raising the topic! It is true that Linus does not back up his claims by experiments, like a speed reading test. But, amusingly, his most vocal critics here seem unaware that they too must back up their claims with figures instead of gut feelings. I think this topic deserves a methodical study. I'd surely love to see figures how much syntax highlighting helps or distracts depending on the circumstances.

Anonymous
Wed 2-Jul-2014 18:16

Ha, I just found a scientific study about this:

http://www.ppig.org/papers/18th-hakala.pdf.

Here is a key part of the conclusion (page 51):

"A suprising finding was that the control scheme, black text on white background, resulted in the same overall search performance as the other coloring schemes.
...
The participants' overall comments on color usage were positive and they reported of perceived performance improvement. However, the results of the experiment do not support his intuition."

This makes the "this blog article is bullshit" comments above look quite amusing indeed.

Anonymous
Sat 5-Jul-2014 21:49

I think it's a good one, because it was actually easier than #26! :)

Anonymous
Thu 10-Jul-2014 11:03

You're right Nyu... and this running process may be blocked when the TTY kernel buffer is full of non-displayed characters, if it outputs too much on stdout/stderr.
I guess the author has taken a shortcut when writing this, as the flow control stop is often used to block a too verbose process and to be able to read few lines before let it go on again.

Yves

Anonymous
Mon 14-Jul-2014 11:16

great post!!

Anonymous
Thu 17-Jul-2014 14:06

En annan nackdel med syntaxfärger är att man skriver kod på ett mycket mer rörigt sätt just på grund av att den är lättare att läsa med färger. Utan färgerna (om man öppnar filen med `less`) blir den mer svårläst. Skriver man utan färger från början så blir man tvungen att arrangera koden på ett snyggare sätt, t.ex. genom att indentera variabelnamn, och den blir då lättläst både med färger och i svartvitt.

Anonymous
Wed 23-Jul-2014 22:17

As one of the non-coder types I'd like a rendered MP3 of this great tune too.

Anonymous
Thu 24-Jul-2014 09:39

Hi!
I'm struggling with RS485 communication:
Is it possible to configure a tty to automatically raise the RTS line before sending and lower the RTS line after sending?
Thank you for your input,
Helmut

Anonymous
Thu 24-Jul-2014 19:06

Hello do you have sid file for this score or may be Are you have PDF file for score.

Anonymous
Sat 26-Jul-2014 00:46

I NEED ONE dude go get this patented keep it up I know this is old but please make this available to everyone!

Anonymous
Mon 28-Jul-2014 06:51

It true that debugging do improve the understanding of the myth underlying the technologies, especially when debugging others's code in programming.

Anonymous
Mon 28-Jul-2014 07:01

Very nice. Good of you to not attempt to debunk Kernighan but leverage his quote!

Anonymous
Mon 28-Jul-2014 11:13

the VT100 was not a colour terminal as the text suggests, though.

Anonymous
Mon 28-Jul-2014 22:07

Unix purist <- I WAS HERE +1 great article

Anonymous
Tue 29-Jul-2014 08:09

I never run into this problem because I usually :!make. Is it necessary to really stop vim in order to do make?