[ooqr]

I turned off syntax highlighting long ago. You may find you don't need it.

You either understand the code or you don't.

[chrisan]

Do you turn off IntelliSense/code completion too or any type of feeback in your IDE/text editor?

Perhaps you just use Notepad because you either understand the code or you don't, right?

Visual aids make me a faster programmer in reading code. I have not found my understanding to go down since first discovering it.