> Remember - the lighter the color, the older the code.
I really think it should be the opposite. Recent code should be clearly visible and older code should progressively interpolate into black. The current setup is extremely unintuitive for me.
That it's so interesting. A lot of people said that to me. But to me it felt more natural to highlight old code. Probably because I had this bias in the back of my mind that old code could be bad code.
In my experience, it's often the new/changed code that is the most interesting. It's often the code that is causing some unexpected bug. 'No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made'
Physical things often become darker with age due to dirt or corrosion. Examples are wood and metal, or an old vs. a new wall painted in the same color. They all become darker over time. Therefore I think it't more intuitive to think of darker things as older.
Actually, the first version only found files where x% of the lines were written by a particular author. Then someone gently suggested checking the line age, which made perfect sense.
If you adapted this to Wikipedia articles (a very nontrivial task) you could highlight "authority": how long has a fragment of an article withstood editors.
Which do we prefer, though? As an industry, we seem to chose the "new shiney" way more than the alternatives. To the point that "hasn't been touched by the author in a few years" is a warning sign more than a sign of completeness.
It's not an issue of preference, but understanding. Knowing how code has evolved can help us understand it. And I particularly liked the point the author raised about comments: it's valuable to know how old a comment is, in case we suspect it no longer reflects the code.
I didn't want to make it look that way. The color indication is without any judgment. It's just interesting how code evolved over time. In fact you should reverse the color gradient or use different colours, so you can read code how you prefer it.
Yeah, I didn't really see this post as reading into it one way or the other. I was more just broadcasting how I don't know what to make of the age of code.
More, I think context plays a big role and it is difficult to see what new is brought to the table at times. Worse, what old was accidentally discarded?
I really think it should be the opposite. Recent code should be clearly visible and older code should progressively interpolate into black. The current setup is extremely unintuitive for me.