The one with fewest colours. I have no idea why people really love colour vomits on their screens. Reading and writing code consumes enough mental CPU that syntax highlighting needs to be a helpful tool, not an overstimulation. Might be my ADHD. The most ridiculous ones are those that have a different colour for methods, variables, free standing functions, classes vs structs. Do people really go "ah, name's yellow, must be a struct"?
Ideally only keywords, numbers, strings would be highlighted, and symbols de-highlighted. And comments need to stand out. Theme designers really like making comments almost impossible to read for some reason.
I tend to prefer muted colours, which are extremely rare to find in the VSCode marketplace. My favourite light is Alabaster by Nikita Propokov, but the best is the dark one One Monokai 80s
I too like themes with less colors! Too much syntax highlighting usually takes my concentration. But I also don't like colored backgrounds, so my current favorites are:
If I'm in VS Code a light them that I love with minimal colors is PyLight. Looks like old school python documentation green/blue. Having read a lot of code documentation in that scheme my brain defaults to understanding it.
In Emacs I use the Tao schemes if I'm feeling mentally tired. I have variable and bracket colorization so I can just match colors on screen to what I am interested in. Another great one is late-night if I am having a migraine day (super low contrast).
One Dark Pro Darker. But I have a long list of themes where I just randomly pick on ones in a while. Sometimes I switch to a light theme and sometimes a dark one. I have the same thing as you, it's also dependent on which language I'm working on the most. Some themes work better with one language than the other.
Oh, interesting. Do you find that it takes a period of time after switching before your eyes become accustomed to the change (from a quick-code-readability perspective)?
> Some themes work better with one language than the other.
Yeah, this is the most annoying part for me.
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I remember reading a post a long time ago praising the benefits of not using syntax highlighting while coding (I'm not sure, but it may have been this one: https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/). Not sure if I could ever get used to not having syntax highlighting, but so much of what I like/dislike about themes revolves around syntax highlighting... perhaps it's worth testing for a period of time with syntax highlighting disabling (I assume this is even possible?).
I quite like Nord. The color scheme is pleasing to look at, available in most editors and terminals for consistency, and looks good at night and during the day.
The coverage for so many tools helps keep it consistent.
It’s one of those “black turtleneck ideas” that you can set something and forget about it, it does the job well and it can be translated to a new machine or a new tool quickly.
This stuff isn’t worth thinking about beyond week 1 of setting up a new machine.
For me I do rotate depending on the time of day or the weather.
If I want less color then it is Py Light. If I want a good light theme then Solarized Light Alternate (really great compared to regular solarized). If I want a dark theme then it'll be Base16 Mocha, Base16 Paraiso, Pudding or skyline.
> They all seem to have small things about them that annoy me.
You can always take a theme that you like and customise it so it doesn't annoy you. Go to .vscode/extensions/<theme-name>/themes/ (or equivalent location for your system) and edit the json file.
I found that if I force myself into using one theme, I got accustomed to it over time so it's just a matter of time. Github Dark Dimmed initially, got annoyed by Tokyonight but forced myself through it. Ended up loving it.
Ayu Mirage Bordered. One Dark Pro was my go to for a long time, but I think Ayu and I have been together for at least 18 months and I haven't had any interest in switching away.
Ideally only keywords, numbers, strings would be highlighted, and symbols de-highlighted. And comments need to stand out. Theme designers really like making comments almost impossible to read for some reason.
I tend to prefer muted colours, which are extremely rare to find in the VSCode marketplace. My favourite light is Alabaster by Nikita Propokov, but the best is the dark one One Monokai 80s
- https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tonsky.t...
- https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=axiomati... (there might be a more active fork)
These days I use Emacs with the excellent Modus Operandi/Vivendi by Prot (in muted colours mode), and experimenting with ef-themes by the same author.