Per statistics, 70% of developers prefer dark themes. Being in the other 30%, that question always puzzled me. Why?
Have you tried asking any of them?
And I think I have an answer. Here’s a typical dark theme: […] and here’s a light one: […] On the latter one, colors are way less vibrant.
Does the author not understand that a lot of us code in darker environments where the light background of most light themes either sears our retinas or forces us to turn the monitor brightness so far down that everything becomes a shade of grey?
Agreed. When I switch from a browser tab with a white background to something dark, my eyes physically feel less stressed. High nit monitors might not be doing us favors on this one.
Most light themes I’ve encountered don’t seem to grasp the concept of ‘contrast’. I bet if you were to survey light theme users, you’d find that most of them have nonstandard/weird settings on their monitors. Chrome dev tools, Xcode, and Visual Studio’s light themes are all great though, as they have proper contrast and don’t look like rainbow vomit.
But one other issue with light themes is that for some people (myself included), it makes ‘eye floaters’ stand out more. I’m fortunate that my case isn’t terrible, but I can see it being a serious problem for some people, especially older developers.
Have you tried asking any of them?
Does the author not understand that a lot of us code in darker environments where the light background of most light themes either sears our retinas or forces us to turn the monitor brightness so far down that everything becomes a shade of grey?
Agreed. When I switch from a browser tab with a white background to something dark, my eyes physically feel less stressed. High nit monitors might not be doing us favors on this one.
Most light themes I’ve encountered don’t seem to grasp the concept of ‘contrast’. I bet if you were to survey light theme users, you’d find that most of them have nonstandard/weird settings on their monitors. Chrome dev tools, Xcode, and Visual Studio’s light themes are all great though, as they have proper contrast and don’t look like rainbow vomit.
But one other issue with light themes is that for some people (myself included), it makes ‘eye floaters’ stand out more. I’m fortunate that my case isn’t terrible, but I can see it being a serious problem for some people, especially older developers.
I use a light theme because my astigmatism causes more blurriness on a dark themes.
deleted by creator