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


I went and read Rob Pike’s comments in the thread linked (I’m not a Go person so don’t see anything he normally says). It’s crazy that this person is listing his comments as a pro, or that he gets any reverence whatsoever. he seems absolutely insufferable.
Yep, he does not like syntax highlighting at all. I think some is still useful.
yeah but like, his other comments are purely inflammatory, there’s even a “you can’t hold me accountable, I was quoting the bible!” line
sorry, entirely unrelated to the original post, just bothered me that this guy was being discussed in a positive light lol