@justine

Align

I'd really miss that Vim plugin.

I write code with a lot array mathematical operations, so vertical alignment is important so I can see, visually, whether I've done The Right Thing™.

I also use digraphs in Vim to put Greek letters in my code, at least where it's visually distinct. (I confess this is evil, but 'ε' instead of 'epsilon' makes the lines *so* much shorter.)

I used to like Python with tabs, because I could set Vim to display the tabs as dim red lines so that I could see the alignment of loop and condition blocks. (This, however, is a battle I have lost.)

@justine

Rob Pike famously wrote: "Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using colored rods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods). I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals."

When people kept arguing for syntax highlightning on the Go Playground, he followed up with: "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things."

For most it's a matter of personal preference. For me... I don't really notice it either way. On my personal devices I have things setup with gruvbox theme, but I don't /need/ syntax highlighting to edit stuff when logging on to somebody elses servers.

@justine I use this one interchangeably with catuppccin as my mood takes me; it makes some good points in the readme about how highlighting should work. (Neovim version as that’s what I’m on but I assume there will be a vim version somewhere)

Edit: forgot the link! https://github.com/dchinmay2/alabaster.nvim

@justine Syntax highlighting is like having flush toilets.

Sure, you can do without, but why should you?