[HN Gopher] Does syntax highlighting help programming novices? (...
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       Does syntax highlighting help programming novices? (2018)
        
       Author : hazelnut-tree
       Score  : 3 points
       Date   : 2022-08-23 22:16 UTC (44 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dl.acm.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dl.acm.org)
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | > _The results suggest that syntax highlighting squanders a
       | feedback channel from the IDE to the programmer that can be used
       | more effectively._
       | 
       | Say what? As in the color channel may be useful in program
       | comprehension, but wasted on lexical syntax? ... And we can tell
       | from studying novices?
       | 
       | More like: opportunity to study syntax coloring was squandered on
       | novices that don't actually understand the programming language.
       | 
       | Do other industries do this? In construction, do they test the
       | effectiveness of a laser level by studying apprentices?
        
       | asojfdowgh wrote:
       | I always felt weird about the fact that Scratch et al exist, and
       | that typing things manually exists, but you can't type code and
       | get a visual result that is scratch-like
        
         | LanternLight83 wrote:
         | Absolutely! UML gets a lot of discussion, but a more reflective
         | model of a written program is something I long for. I love the
         | feedback that I get from, say, writing a Tupfile and running
         | `tup graph` to see an actual graph of all my recipes, complete
         | with their commands, inputs, outputs, and interdependencies as
         | understood by the build system. I haven't used Unity, but it
         | looks like it has blender-like node-based programming that
         | gives me the same feel, where each box ia just code but the
         | connections between them are illustrated. Lastly, Emacs allows
         | you to instrument function definitions with edebug, and
         | stepping through the code or even just letting it run in a loop
         | and observing the movement of the point-of-execution has given
         | me a lot insight into packages that I've worked on. None of
         | this is really "the thing", but each example gives me the same
         | vibes, of _showing_ how existing code or control flows are
         | structured.
        
         | ok_dad wrote:
         | The weirdest thing is that several languages have formatters
         | and linters that constantly convert text into tokens and then
         | back into text. Just do it one time and convert what text the
         | user enters into a token then process that token like you say
         | into a visual block that guides the developer better than plain
         | text with completions.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-23 23:01 UTC)