Understanding the Effects of Code Presentation

The majority of software is still written using text-based programming languages. With today’s large, high-resolution color displays, developers have devised their own “folk design” methodologies to exploit these advances. As software becomes more and more critical to everyday life, supporting developers in rapidly producing and revising code accurately should be a priority. We consider how layout, typefaces, anti-aliasing, syntax highlighting, and semantic highlighting might impact developer efficiency, and accuracy.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Association for Computing Machinery via http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2846680.284668