[syklemil]

You've had some answers already, but I also think this is a good argument for syntax highlighting. With tools like tree-sitter it's pretty easy these days to get high quality syntax highlighting, which allows us humans to receive more information in parallel. A lot of the information we pick up in our daily lives is carried through color, and being colorblind is generally seen as a disability (albeit often a mild one which can be undetected for decades).

Syntax highlighting in print is more limited because of technological and economic constraints, which might leave just bold, italics and underlines on the table, while dropping color. On screens and especially in our editors where we see the most code, a lack of color is often a self-imposed limitation.

[davidw]

That's not the point though. If you need the syntax highlighting to quickly make out the structure, perhaps the visual layout is not as good as it could be.

[syklemil]

I consider syntax highlighting to be a part of the _visual_ structure. Visibility is more than just whitespace and placement!