No more tired eyes - use dark themes!
As programmers, we stare at the screen all day, much of the time at some coding IDE. By default, every IDE I've seen uses dark font on white background. You will only realize how tiring all that white is for your eyes (and brain) if you have tried switching to a dark theme for a few days and then switch back to the default theme.
Here's how an IDE typically looks like by default, using a high-contrast white-background theme:
Here's the same with a low-contrast dark theme (e.g. PHPStorm 6 Darcula):
Warning: it takes some days to get used to a dark theme and the specific color scheme (which you should be able to tweak according to your preferences). But if you switch back to default after a few days, all that light will turn you to ashes like a vampire.
Written by Adrian Imfeld
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3 Responses
For a discussion of dark vs. light themes, also see http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6925/are-light-on-dark-colour-schemes-for-computer-screens-better-for-programmers
However, IMO dark themes only make sense if they are implemented consistently. Having a dark theme for Word, Excel, Chrome, etc doesn't help much, if the displayed document / website still has a white background. Indeed, using an inconsistent dark theme (e.g. dark program background with bright document background) may even be worse than the default bright themes, due to a resulting high contrast between documents and program.
I'll give it a try! :)
