You know how the default look of almost all code editor themes has the keywords bold and brightly colored? I think this is silly. The keywords are the least important parts of your code, in my opinion.
Half the time, you can tell what a keyword is going to be just because of where it is in the code and the shape of the code around it . A top-level declaration with other declarations inside it? Probably a class. A series of lines just inside the class, all with the same tabbing? Probably the list of fields on the class.
Different patterns apply slightly differently to different languages. But if you know the language, you know the patterns, and you therefore can guess the keyword for it.
So why do we make the part we can already guess stand out? The names that WE create should be the important parts.
That’s why, when I make my code themes for my private viewing (not for public stuff; I don’t want to have to explain this idea every time someone else looks at my code), I stop making keywords bold, and I give them a color that makes them fade into the background a little bit. Often, I’ll also try to add bold or italics to identifiers.
To a leaser extent, I do the same thing with operators. I’ll fade them a tiny bit and get rid of bold, if it exists. But I don’t fade them as much because they’re more important, though still less so than the names you came up with.
I understand that the bold lettering works great for newcomers to a language, though, helping them to see and learn the keywords and language better. So I do understand bolding keywords for that.
Programming Ideas With Jake 