Please stop the Dark Mode Act!
Reinhart Previano Koentjoro (@reinhart)
Published on Logs of the SYSTEM #0a0e14 #282c34 #visual-studio-code
The colloquial Dark Mode Act states that every single programmer on Earth shall must code in dark mode.
Through this post I kindly ask to all developers to stand against the Dark Mode Act. There are many reasons behind this, of course, but here are some highlights:
Reason 1: Not every modern “dark theme” is pure black.
That TikTok video I showed you, if you're understand Indonesian language, originally featured someone saying that “programmers must be looking at (absolute, pure) black screen”.
One of my favorite dark themes, the One Dark that came from Atom, has a background color of #282C34. THAT'S NOT EVEN #000000!
Even the dark theme I use over the last 6 months: Ayu Dark, which has a background color of #0A0E14, and again, not #000000.
Of course, there are many themes that uses pure black as the background. But I see many of IDE default dark themes (including Darcula, Eclipse, Monokai) don't sport pure black background.
Reason 2: Microsoft kinda hate dark mode by default?
Whether it's the good-old Visual Studio, or the overhyped Visual Studio Code, you'll always be likely greeted with a light theme on the first run, especially if you're on Windows 7 or 8.
And if you factor in other IDEs: Eclipse, NetBeans, DEV-C++, PowerShell ISE, Scratch, Delphi, Google Apps Script, Notepad++, Microsoft SQL Sever Management Studio (SSMS), Tizen Studio, and even Jupyter Notebook, they're all use light theme by default!
Reason 3: I personally love light themes.
Being able to switch between light and dark themes is indeed a personal freedom. That's why I always find for matching light and dark theme sets over Kate and Visual Studio Code.
Again, I really loved the light themes of Ayu and (Atom) One for having enough levels of contrast between each color, yet dislike other themes such as Eclipse and GitHub for having too much text contrast.
Anyway, the reason why my personal website is dark by default is because the underlying WordPress block-based theme does not support light/dark switcher. I still have to respect those who want to live a dark life so yeah...
