I tried rainbow/semantic coloring for a while, but felt it messed with my pattern recognizion. And when everything is highlighted, nothing is, it felt loud.
I totally get what you mean about loudness, I toned down the brightness (technically, saturation) of the colors in the palette I used once I started using semantic coloring.
I don't know what you mean about "when everything is highlighted, nothing is"—shouldn't they be highlighted different colors, often diametrically opposed colors?
With my coloring most of the time I don't even notice the semantic coloring except when I'm looking for it, especially when I type a long variable or method name and I'm thinking "did I spell this right?", if I see the same name somewhere else and if it has the same color, then I have high confidence I didn't make any typos.
That usage reminds me of the now old visual password shape/color demos that let you know you typed your password correctly when it matches your expectations. I don't think it caught on anywhere though.
I don't know what you mean about "when everything is highlighted, nothing is"—shouldn't they be highlighted different colors, often diametrically opposed colors?
With my coloring most of the time I don't even notice the semantic coloring except when I'm looking for it, especially when I type a long variable or method name and I'm thinking "did I spell this right?", if I see the same name somewhere else and if it has the same color, then I have high confidence I didn't make any typos.