Good Editor? (What's the big deal with syntax colouring?)

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 22-Mar-2001 John Schmitt wrote:
> In the dog days of DOS, I was a brief guy.  Now I use CodeWright.  It's the
> best editor I've used (and I've used vi, although not too extensively).
> 
> Why do people want syntax colouring?  I can't stand it.  One of my minor
> beefs with CodeWright is that there isn't a one button way to tell it to
> change _all_ of my colours all at once.  Am I missing something by disabling
> syntax colouring?  It always reminds me of the artwork my 6-year-old nephew
> brings home from school to show his mommy.
> 

I code in about 5 languages, each with slightly different syntax.  For the
first few moments, I find syntax highlighting helpful because I can see that
'next' is a perl keyword, not a python keyword (I need 'continue' instead).