I am a successful software engineer (20+ years, worked in companies like NVIDIA, had been at Google for the last decade) and I have dyslexia. I was also diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago but I do not want to take medications as they did not improve my quality of life.
Syntax/semantic highlight and animations are the only reason I am in this profession. I do not "read code" - I mostly "parse" the shape of it, relying on identations and colors to grasp what is going on. I loved when I worked with Java that Eclipse and IntelliJ refactoring support enabled me to quickly restrusture code the way I can easily understand it.
color and shape of segments of code are far more useful to me than reading, once I've already read that code.
I need those colors and those shapes. people who say that no one needs syntax highlighting are so myopic that it makes my head spin. oh everyone is exactly like you, are they? no one needs syntax highlighting! no one!
80-column rules are the same, for me. arbitrary nonsense rules made up by people who do not have the exact brain that I have, but who assume that everyone has the exact same brain that they have.
this profession is riddled with people who think they know the best way for all software developers to work, and I swear nothing is more perfectly crafted to inspire in me the urge to murder people than people who say these things. believing you know the best way for everyone in your field to work is one of the apex caustic traits of professional software developers, and it is an extremely common trait, in my experience.
everyone is different. there is no enforced development style, or enforced language, or enforced framework which is even acceptable to even 10% of all software developers, never mind being "best for everyone."
This is why like tabs over spaces. I like a tab to be equivalent to 4 spaces. But my coworker may prefer a tab to be 2 spaces. Another may prefer 6 etc.
Tabs let each individual render the code to their liking while keeping everything in sync. Using spaces forces everyone to one person's preference.
Syntax/semantic highlight and animations are the only reason I am in this profession. I do not "read code" - I mostly "parse" the shape of it, relying on identations and colors to grasp what is going on. I loved when I worked with Java that Eclipse and IntelliJ refactoring support enabled me to quickly restrusture code the way I can easily understand it.