On Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:02:20 +0530
Weldon Goree <weldon_AT_langurwallah.org> 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 <dev_AT_frign.de>
Received on Wed Jul 02 2014 - 13:49:23 CEST