this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Programming

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Why I use minimal syntax highlighting (2019) (ctrl-c.us)
submitted 1 day ago by chasteinsect@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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This is an older blog post I came across while reading this related one on syntax highlighting:

I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong @ tonsky.me. It was posted here 3 months ago.

I think both make great points and has pushed me to into a rabbit hole of re-writing my current Nord theme into something a bit more minimal, only for me to eventually realize Nord theme with barely any syntax highlighting (mostly white text) looks very bleak and I didn't want to spend the time to hunt all the highlight groups to make things look good, so I tried out the Alabaster theme, which the guy from the 2nd article created and I love it, feels like it really hits that middle spot between too much highlighting and not enough.

Here's the theme I used for nvim :

https://github.com/p00f/alabaster.nvim?tab=readme-ov-file

I changed some things (matching bracket background color for visibility, comments grayed out and property names of tables should be yellow, instead green).

You can see the picture of how it looks here

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[โ€“] tomenzgg@midwest.social 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doesn't resonate with me, I'm afraid; the initial images are too much highlighting but much preferable, for me, than the suggested adjustment.

[โ€“] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago

Yeah. This article pops up every once in a while and it's always the same reaction. Skittles color schemes can suck. Good thing there's an infinite amount of color schemes to pick from or create your own. AND the suggested solution this article gives also sucks. The bold and italics tip is cool but everybody has different tastes.

I color keywords, comments, strings, and constants. Italics are used for function names and comments. Then errors and warnings are a red/yellow color. I can spot right away where I fucked up because the color of the word changes. It looks good to me and I can tell where everything is unlike in the examples given in the article.