this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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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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[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I like the way you presented the ctrl-c blog post as sort of introductory to the tonsky.me one. The second one is much more useful in terms of exploring the details and making specific recommendations, but the first one does a good job of motivating why I should care.

Also, it's funny how both authors are kinda beating around the edges of literate programming e.g. in their discussion of code comments being one of the things worth highlighting, without ever quite getting there.

[–] chasteinsect@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks! I have never heard of literate programming before.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

IMO Jupyter notebooks are a good example to look into first, if you want something more contemporary and somewhat widely-used than "tangle and weave."