It's probably been discussed to death, and I apologize if you are rolling your eyes at its mere mention: I really, really like the Solarized colour scheme.
It's now deeply ingrained into my "visual muscle memory" that a terminal without Solarized just looks wrong to me. Even text editors look strange and jarring without those familiar and soothing colours.
It's interesting that the colours in that Swiss Style Color Picker (linked from the article) seem to be taken from a similar visual family of colours (shades? hues? I am not literate in colour's language).
I used solarized exclusively for several years in text editors and the terminal. But after some years I couldn't stand looking at those blue-ish hues all day. Nowadays I use gruvbox [1] the text editor (but still stick to solarized in the terminal). Gruvbox really is a nice change with it's orange and brown, warm colors, I cannot recommend it enough.
Solarized has never worked for me, but gruvbox looks interesting. It looks like it's reducing the blue light from the screen, which might help with sleep problems. It looks a bit like my normal theme after f.lux[1] starts in the evening. (Normally I switch between tender[2] and louver[3].)
I too was a proponent of Solarized, but it has intercolor contrast issues when a blue light filter (Flux / Night Shift / Night Light) is active. I wholeheartedly recommend Oceanic Next instead. The colors itself are also less intense, which is a huge boon :)
I once read a rather compelling argument against syntax coloring. The primary idea was that it's hard to keep it consistent and thus you'll be getting different visual cues every time, thus confusing your visual memory. I actually follow this advice and I'd say it works for me: I don't need any coloring in code. (I only use rather simple coloring on web pages and now, actually, I think I should at least make it optional.)
I agree. Solarized was developed with objectivity in mind, but the choice of a dark-blue and light-beige background colors are completely arbitrary. I use a modified solarized palette with #444444 background and it works fine.
I’ve seen a recent trend of terminals with red backgrounds that I’m starting to like more than Solarized. It’s not quite as soothing, but easier to focus.
That sounds interesting, and somewhat counter-intuitive, I'd definitely like to see an example you've encountered. :) (Rather than just Googling some random example)
Thank you. I was vaguely aware of different meanings, and I didn't want to use a term that I wasn't sure of its exact meaning.
(That stems from my ongoing frustration with people mixing up terms in various IT arenas like trouble tickets or design documents. "The server is down" can mean a hundred different things depending on who is saying it, and spending time teasing out the true meaning of a bug report or Jira issue can be maddening!)
Zenburn is great! I've used it for many years (I don't like Solarized, for some reason), and then last year I made a blue-ish offshoot of it: https://github.com/mvarela/Sunburn-Theme, which I use nowadays.
It's now deeply ingrained into my "visual muscle memory" that a terminal without Solarized just looks wrong to me. Even text editors look strange and jarring without those familiar and soothing colours.
It's interesting that the colours in that Swiss Style Color Picker (linked from the article) seem to be taken from a similar visual family of colours (shades? hues? I am not literate in colour's language).