Winter is Coming - Light has been my main VS Code theme for years. Alas, no senior title yet...
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Senior dev and I like dark mode because I also like my retinas.
Dark mode in the dark makes your pupils do funny things like constantly widening and narrowing. Dark mode with a backlight is the best. Any screen in the complete darkness is like self destruction to the eyes
This is why I've stuck around the intermediate level for a long time. my eyes cant take the super dark or super bright.
Definitely just that reason and no others.
I don't work in the dark. I work during the day, when my employment hours are. When it's dark I'm not working anymore.
Your retinas will be perfectly fine, if you make sure the whole room is lit. Sunlight is significantly stronger than the backlight from a monitor.
Dark mode and a dimly lit room do make sense, if you're coding something in the evening and don't want to disrupt your circadian rhythm.
Mine sure aren't with light mode, even in brightly lit office environment. Different people have different eyes, and needs. What may be an unnecessary gimmick for you may very well be vital to the next person's livelihood.
Well, I'm not trying to take dark mode away from anybody. I assumed, the person I replied to did not have specific health issues, because surely, they would have mentioned them.
Of course, there's people who genuinely cannot leave the house without sunglasses, because of migraines or an eye operation or loads of other reasons.
I was mainly trying to say that it's not damaging to retinas, if you've got otherwise healthy eyes. Or at least the chance of light from a monitor, which has much reduced spectrum and strength than sunlight, being damaging in ways that sunlight is not, is extremely low.
Of course, the advantage of light themes, i.e. better readability in bright rooms (and bright rooms are generally better for mental health, when used during the day, due to stronger activation of circadian rhythm), that's also ultimately just a matter of comfort.
If looking at a dark theme even just brings you immense joy, then go for it.
Wait did you really take the retina thing literally ???
It is interesting, I got a promotion pretty much exactly when I started using light modes (farewell DarkReader, my beloved).
My eyes hurt too much nowadays to tolerate only dark themes. There's a good balance in the middle and sometimes light is very good to relax the eyes.
Maybe you've been using themes with too much contrast ? I mean, I can't work on a light theme for any extended period of time, but most dark themes are too stark and eye searing for me, so that may be your case too?
I think perfection is probably somewhere between dark and light themes. Light can frequently be too bright where it feels like you're looking into the sun. And dark can be like working in literally the dark, and it's sometimes too difficult to see the boundaries between objects. I think it would be cool if we had a sliding scale, where you can pick from several brightness levels.
It's the same as Color balancing. The best solution often depends on the light balance of the room. Nothing stopping you from editing the theme to keep optimize out
Problem is that contrast is not a thing for the "middle" levels.
So, for a white or light gray background, you can have black as contrast color. And for a dark gray or black background, you can have white as contrast color.
But for middle gray, both white and black don't really provide enough contrast.
A slider to at least choose between white, light gray, dark gray and black would still be cool, though.
Another senior dev here, one of those weirdos who likes light mode. Sometimes. VS Code’s light mode is blinding to me, and I never use it. But Nova’s is beautiful and I prefer it. It depends how well the app renders fonts and colors. The oversaturated colors used in most apps are a big problem.
VSCode has theme support; there are light themes, that are not so bright and dark themes that aren't that dark.
I prefer a very dark gray, a very good font (Iosevka, tuned to my needs) and an appropiate font size (because wearing glasses).
I hope, I never get this senior title. It is complete BS to me. And I am glad, that my junior status is gone for good and I have a job title that does not try to tell something about my expierience!
Things just got darker over here, my screen would be completely black if it were still usable.
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