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Disclaimer: I am not responsible for what people (other than myself) write in the forums. Please report any abuse, such as insults, slander, spam and illegal material, and I will take appropriate actions. Don't feed the trolls.

Jag tar inget ansvar för det som skrivs i forumet, förutom mina egna inlägg. Vänligen rapportera alla inlägg som bryter mot reglerna, så ska jag se vad jag kan göra. Som regelbrott räknas till exempel förolämpningar, förtal, spam och olagligt material. Mata inte trålarna.

Aug 2010

Spellbound

Anonymous
Sun 1-Aug-2010 06:50
BÄST!

Klämrisk Hero

Anonymous
Sun 1-Aug-2010 21:19
Somehow nice, I really like the music :)

Besides that... call me stupid, but what are the objects in the elevator next to the persons supposed to be? They look a bit like trashcans, but I'm not quite sure..

Cheers,
T


its a trashcan. In sweden there is a warning sign in elevators which is a pic of this dude strangled to dead by the trashcan.

Yeah, here's a pic of a typical "klämrisk" sign:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/2987688664_e71bb18ea5.jpg

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Sun 1-Aug-2010 23:31
Реально круто!!!! Мужик, ты молодец
Anonymous
Sun 1-Aug-2010 23:53
I want your babies. All of them. This is the most AMAZING mod of ANYTHING EVER.
Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 01:33
Congratulations, it's awesome!
Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 03:35
måste bara säga att du är ett geni... jag verkligen ÄLSKAR 8-bitars ljud och hade nog gett i princip vad som helst för att få tag den eller att lära mig hur man gör en...borde nästan starta en massproduktion av detta och bli miljonär.. keep it going!=)
Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 07:04
I think this is great, you're giving it some life! I'm actually a Hammond organist. Mine's just like that one, except it uses a tube system instead of a solid state one. The Hammonds are by far the most valuable and desirable as antique instruments. Any tonewheel organ that isn't a Hammond isn't particularly valuable in its original state, but it makes for a great steampunk keyboard! Rock on, dude! :D
lft
Linus Åkesson
Mon 2-Aug-2010 15:42

Tommy-Cat wrote:

I have a few questions:
-why didnt you used an already build atmega solution like CraftDuino/Arduino

I don't see the point of them. The bare ATmega88 (DIL package) is powerful and user friendly as it is.

Tommy-Cat wrote:

and is there any chance that someday you will make a pair of this retromachine for those who are in need?

Currently, I don't have any plans to make another one. But I might change my mind.

The TTY demystified

Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 20:22
How do you restart bash in tty0? For some reason my bash has died in all tty's (Ctrl-Alt-Fn). I does not show the login prompt anymore.

How can I restart it? I cannot reboot the machine. I can ssh into it from another machine.

Spellbound

Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 21:45
Haha, detta måste vara det mest nördiga bygget jag sett, i positiv bemärkelse. =)

Instrumentet och dess skapare måste genast ut på sverigeturne!!!

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 22:32
if u do so.. im willing to buy one!

Brainfuck

Anonymous
Mon 2-Aug-2010 22:58
OMFG!! (even though god has nothing to do with it) I can't believe this! That is the stuff heroes of our time are made of. Seriously!

Legend of Zelda

Anonymous
Tue 3-Aug-2010 18:39
allthough it can be seen that you are not very secure at playing it (yet) its lovely.
one of my fav. NES tunes.
now please hubbard - sanxion ;=)
Anonymous
Tue 3-Aug-2010 22:54
wow. The only way I can tell that it is actually him playing is his occasional (and few) mistakes. I am impressed.

If you like this, check out this woman playing entire musical scores like Star Wars and Indiana Jones on an electone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16oaGSltUPE&feature=player_embedded

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Wed 4-Aug-2010 12:17
Good sir, this is a fantistic piece of work. Well done!
Anonymous
Wed 4-Aug-2010 15:52
Congratulations for the fine work!
I also made some like this. Now I´m working
on a Hammond emulator based on a FPGA chip.
Regards
Sergio Bordini
Porto Alegre - Brazil
Anonymous
Wed 4-Aug-2010 16:57
I don't understand half of the technical jargon you're using (I'm new to programming) but seeing all the cool projects you've completed makes me want to learn more than ever. Amazing stuff.
Anonymous
Wed 4-Aug-2010 19:08
I agree with some of the other comments earlier, you could definitely take this act to conventions for sure! (shameless video request coming...) Please can you play the moon stage from duck tails NES!!!

The TTY demystified

lft
Linus Åkesson
Thu 5-Aug-2010 08:10
How do you restart bash in tty0? For some reason my bash has died in all tty's (Ctrl-Alt-Fn). I does not show the login prompt anymore.

How can I restart it? I cannot reboot the machine. I can ssh into it from another machine.

I don't know what's wrong in your particular case, but it's init (pid 1) that's supposed to (re-)start the login program in each terminal. You can modify init's configuration at runtime by editing /etc/inittab and then doing "kill -HUP 1". But it's probably not an error in the configuration file, so use ps(1) to investigate what processes are running in the terminals.

Legend of Zelda

lft
Linus Åkesson
Thu 5-Aug-2010 08:19
wow. The only way I can tell that it is actually him playing is his occasional (and few) mistakes. I am impressed.

If you like this, check out this woman playing entire musical scores like Star Wars and Indiana Jones on an electone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16oaGSltUPE&feature=player_embedded

Yes, I agree. I'm aware of her work and she's an inspiration for sure.

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Thu 5-Aug-2010 13:28
Hi, amazing work -amazing result. The chipophone really recreates the NES sounds perfectly (pulse,p50%,p25%,p12%, tri, noise..) however, as a former amigatracker-nerd, I remember the voices for the music where made up of short digital waveforms (often handdrawn), Is there a way to get these sounds into the chipophone aswell? Deeply impressed / Joel

About me

Anonymous
Thu 5-Aug-2010 20:43
Hey Linus, I got acquainted with your work through the Chipophone demonstration video and as if that wasn't impressive enough I browsed through your homepage and other video's a little bit and I'm blown away. I used to be a chiptune (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6f9DqJ4Vl0 - you may or may not have seen my nickname or group come by..) and assembler aficionado myself and I was highly interested in scene productions myself some 10-15 years ago, and I've never or rarely encountered someone with such a diverse and extensive set of skills of you. Anyway, as far as programming goes, have you ever delved into the topic of metamorphic code, ie. code that (fully) reprograms itself? It was (is?) mainly used in (demonstrational) computer viruses so anti-virus couldn't detect it by seeking for fixed binary strings and it's a great brain excercise to program.

I wish I still had the dedication to occupy myself with such pet-projects.

Guido

Legend of Zelda

Anonymous
Fri 6-Aug-2010 00:00
Grymt! Skitbra spelat, och vilken orgel!

Var nyss inne på Kossan.se och där hade du fått 1987 visningar. Stämmer hyfsat med spelets tillkomst :-)

Making the Chipophone

Tommy-Cat
Томас Игоревичь
Fri 6-Aug-2010 10:01

lft wrote:

Currently, I don't have any plans to make another one. But I might change my mind.
Totally agreed, chipophone is exclusive to make even few of them, but how about some midi controlled box with few knobs and buttons made exclusively by lft? That would be awesome :)

The Swan

Cathedrow
Peter Knight
Fri 6-Aug-2010 16:05
Did someone say "Daisy Bell" on a minimalist platform?

How about an ATmega168?

http://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wiki/Cantarino

(This was coded in a rush - most of the unvoiced phonemes are weak or missing)

Reverberations

Anonymous
Fri 6-Aug-2010 22:03
Wow. Just wow. This will go together just great with the Wendy Carlos stuff and the Brad Smith 8-bit version of "Dark Side of the Moon" I've been listening to recently. Also loved your YouTube clips featuring the Chipophone. Keep it up, Linus. The world needs nerds like you! :D

Ben, from Germany

About me

Anonymous
Sat 7-Aug-2010 02:41
You must be older than 115 to get the knowledge you have and such composition skills?...
Mucho respect!
I wanted to write something, but what is said above is well explanatory. good luck from GBG

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Sun 8-Aug-2010 07:52
Congrats Linus, you and your machine are just awesome... i'm without words.
Tommy-Cat
Томас Игоревичь
Sun 8-Aug-2010 14:34
wanted to contak via email but antispam filter rejected :(

Spellbound

Anonymous
Sun 8-Aug-2010 19:51
super kickass!

holy crap! Awesome indeed

Ole Marius

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Sun 8-Aug-2010 20:56
Amazing work! Any plans on publishing schematics/software?

Craft

Anonymous
Mon 9-Aug-2010 12:45
Wow, this is way up there on my favorites list. True blue ribbon winner project. Excellent use of additional capabilities shift register.

The best I have seen so far video & audio with AVR with such minimal parts and no overclocking...

I'd wait for this to download over 300bps, :P

The TTY demystified

Anonymous
Mon 9-Aug-2010 23:41
Great article.
For another great source on TTY devices you can go to:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.genprogc/doc/genprogc/ttysys.htm

Enjoy,
Ori

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Tue 10-Aug-2010 18:19
You are so fucking awesome :D

Legend of Zelda

Anonymous
Tue 10-Aug-2010 19:24
Yes, Rob Hubbard's Sanxion would be a great song to play, but only if you have the time and desire
Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 01:21
Awesome! Postade ett inlägg om dig på min nyöppnade nördblogg; http://anorakalert.wordpress.com

:) Fantastiskt bra spelat!

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 03:58
Helt galet underbart! Vacker idé och klockrent genomförd.
Mycket bra jobbat! Vill ha en Chipophone i min studio. Nu!
/RobinTengvall.se

Phasor

Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 07:15
Respect.

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 13:03
Truly an amazing and incredible project. A fantastic array of sound. I'm looking forward to hearing the sound with the spring reverb in circuit, although a more reliable and stable reverb can be made with the AVR as well. But the spring reverb is more authentic, and more challenging to interface.
Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 17:34
This is so awesome! Keep it up! :D

Phasor

Anonymous
Wed 11-Aug-2010 23:32
Linus,

As I was on LCP 2009 I was totally amazed by your piece of music. Now that I, one year later, checked you up in more detail, I must say your work is brilliant.

The TTY demystified

Anonymous
Fri 13-Aug-2010 10:59
Very good article...
We want the part II were the concepts gets even closer to the Linux implementation...

just an example:
an xterm session under ssh when resized makes the TTY device to adjust the terminal size and generate SIGWINCH signal for the running app to know about the change...
but if the xterm is under a serial line when resize occurs NOTHING happens (not kernel side size update, not SIGWINCH signal)... I know under serial line xterm does not communicate the size change, well where is the the place to patch in order to solve this, from the xterm side it would be very easy to send a escape sequence telling the TTY driver the new size but this driver should be patched for catching it and react as in the ssh case....

Thanks for your out of ordinary (little or inexistant content + lot of google adds) article. I hope we can get a deeper version someday.

Pat

DuckTales, The Moon

Anonymous
Mon 16-Aug-2010 05:45
just ace.

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Mon 16-Aug-2010 05:56
Awesome project. Good luck with the reverb tank and the internal speaker - you know it would sound that much sweeter with both of those! Maybe catch you at a party one day (whenever I'm next in Europe) cTrix^DA

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Mon 16-Aug-2010 09:56
While this does not look easy, I think that you could go into a business of actually selling this, once you perfect the code, I for one would buy it as many other people would as well.

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Mon 16-Aug-2010 15:11
Why you haven't used the already present power supply and power amplifier to have internal amplifcation? I think most the components are already there. If the problem is of dead electrolytics, you can even try to reform the original ones.

A case against syntax highlighting

Anonymous
Mon 16-Aug-2010 17:03
Hello lft,

Syntax highlighting is simply enhancing perceptible information. It redundantly presents essential information (i.e. the code). Syntax highlight does not *add* information, it enhances it.

It's one of the basic principles of design, and since you're into typography I kinda expected you to be familiar with this.

I always smile at hardcore coders with black&white screens, who think basic principles of cognitive psychology don't apply to them :)

Making the Chipophone

Anonymous
Tue 17-Aug-2010 03:41
Excellent work! Now make it AY-compatible :-)

A case against syntax highlighting

Anonymous
Tue 17-Aug-2010 08:42
Hi Linus,
I also disagree with you. OTOH, I want to point out that there *are* sensible and stupid syntax highlighters and color schemes. The example that you provided is indeed a bad one: I don't need strings, numbers, and operators to be colored differently.
What I *do* need is indeed coloring of comments and high-level identifiers, i.e. function/class/method names.
That really enhances the perception when skimming through code.
Have a nice day,
Hans
PS: I am sorry, I have not read most of the anonymous comments yet, so maybe this has been pointed out earlier.

DuckTales, The Moon

Anonymous
Tue 17-Aug-2010 09:16
You are absolutely awesome! I could make a long list of requests of song for you.

But I'll settle with making you a challenge instead, can you pull of the Silver Surfer tune for NES?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGNSHNf-nlU

Kind Regards,
Pontus

Legend of Zelda

Anonymous
Wed 18-Aug-2010 15:15
thank you very much for playing such a beautiful song. thank you for bringing back the memories

Autosokoban

Anonymous
Thu 19-Aug-2010 20:31
i do believe http://www.linusakesson.net/games/autosokoban/?v=1&seed=722222541&level=768 is impossible...
Anonymous
Thu 19-Aug-2010 20:37
i do believe http://www.linusakesson.net/games/autosokoban/?v=1&seed=722222541&level=768 is impossible...

har har just kidding its solvable just really strange :B

Spellbound

Anonymous
Fri 20-Aug-2010 02:03
you should record robocop 3 :)
great job on the instrument, very well done, excellent work, pure genius.

Seconded. Robocop 3 is completely awesome. Way better than boring non-arpeggiated NES tunes. :)

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Fri 20-Aug-2010 03:04
Hey mate.. I want you to make one for me!!! Message me and let's try to work something out :) jimipolar@gmail.com
Anonymous
Fri 20-Aug-2010 13:36
You seem to respond only to those that either

1 -- Speak hardcore nerd

2 -- tell you off.

So here goes. E = mc*mc. Pi = 3.14159265. There are four stages of matter. Yo momma. Gotcha yet? Good. There are basically 3 levels of nerd that come to this site. lvl 1 -- soft nerds, can only understand that this instrument makes cool sounds and are here to congratulate you/ask you to build one for them. 2 -- the middle class nerd, understands the things this machine does, but doesn't understand a single thing about how it's made. We need this midi file, or w/e it is that's missing and keeping us from making it. We've seen this thing, and we need this thing. This thing is the son of epic and uberleet, and yet, we can't reach it. The softies don't care enough, and lvl 3s know how you made it and are probably off making a prototype of their own. I don't care if you charge and make an instruction book or anything, that's on you. All i know is, I need this chipophone.

The TTY demystified

Anonymous
Sat 21-Aug-2010 03:00
Hi,

A very interesting article. I have just published a related article on the terminals in French : http://www.etud.insa-toulouse.fr/~mcheramy/wordpress/?p=198
(And if you don't understand french, there are few interesting links in english at the end)

Thanks.
Max.

The Chipophone

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 24-Aug-2010 17:43
Hi, amazing work -amazing result. The chipophone really recreates the NES sounds perfectly (pulse,p50%,p25%,p12%, tri, noise..) however, as a former amigatracker-nerd, I remember the voices for the music where made up of short digital waveforms (often handdrawn), Is there a way to get these sounds into the chipophone aswell? Deeply impressed / Joel

Hi! No, presently there's no way to use custom waveforms. For one thing, there's no intuitive way of mapping waveform design onto the physical controls available on the organ.

About me

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 24-Aug-2010 17:48
... Anyway, as far as programming goes, have you ever delved into the topic of metamorphic code, ie. code that (fully) reprograms itself? It was (is?) mainly used in (demonstrational) computer viruses so anti-virus couldn't detect it by seeking for fixed binary strings and it's a great brain excercise to program.

Not yet. =) It's a fascinating subject, but I've only read a basic overview so far.

The Swan

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 24-Aug-2010 17:50

Cathedrow wrote:

Did someone say "Daisy Bell" on a minimalist platform?

How about an ATmega168?

http://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wiki/Cantarino

(This was coded in a rush - most of the unvoiced phonemes are weak or missing)

Cool!

Making the Chipophone

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 24-Aug-2010 18:00
Why you haven't used the already present power supply and power amplifier to have internal amplifcation? I think most the components are already there. If the problem is of dead electrolytics, you can even try to reform the original ones.

It's a valid point, but I'd have to reverse engineer the entire power supply, because I don't want to meddle with a 230 Volt circuit unless I understand it. Thus, using an off-the-shelf power supply is quicker and safer, apart from being more efficient.

A case against syntax highlighting

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 24-Aug-2010 18:06
Hello lft,

Syntax highlighting is simply enhancing perceptible information. It redundantly presents essential information (i.e. the code). Syntax highlight does not *add* information, it enhances it.

Do you also consider the prose example to be enhanced? My point is that enhancing and distracting are two sides of the same coin.

It's one of the basic principles of design, and since you're into typography I kinda expected you to be familiar with this.

On the contrary, a basic rule of thumb of typography is to stick to a single font. SOME people use CAPS to indicate EMPHASIS, thus BREAKING this rule. I find that it makes the text less readable.

I always smile at hardcore coders with black&white screens, who think basic principles of cognitive psychology don't apply to them :)

I'm happy to have made you smile.

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Tue 24-Aug-2010 21:06
Love your work, you're a genius ;o)
Greetings !
Anonymous
Tue 24-Aug-2010 22:07
I'm astonished you managed to make such an amazing synth using an ATmega88. I've found other instructions and code online for making similar synths using similar microcontrollers, but they all seem to be monophonic and don't include as many features.

You mentioned that the synth takes MIDI input, could you actually just hook up any MIDI controller and control the synth with that? Or are there some other special instructions that you've created which are Chipophone specific?

I love the sound of the synth, you're simply amazing as a programmer and composer.

I know many people have asked, and you seem reluctant, but everyone would greatly appreciate it if you released the source for the synth, even if you didn't clean it up. If you don't want to release it, I know that I would even love the opprotunity to buy a preprogrammed ATmega88 from you and I'm sure others would, too.

Well, for now I guess I'll have to look into trying to duplicate your programming achievement on my own ATmega88. Thanks for the inspiration!
lft
Linus Åkesson
Wed 25-Aug-2010 15:54
You seem to respond only to those that either

1 -- Speak hardcore nerd

2 -- tell you off.

So here goes. E = mc*mc. Pi = 3.14159265. There are four stages of matter. Yo momma. Gotcha yet? Good.

Yes, well, I read all comments and appreciate all the feedback (here and through other channels). A part of me wants each and everyone of my fans to get an individual reply. But if I were to spend all my time on internet forums, I wouldn't have enough time to create new, interesting stuff for your enjoyment.

... and lvl 3s know how you made it and are probably off making a prototype of their own. I don't care if you charge and make an instruction book or anything, that's on you. All i know is, I need this chipophone.

In that case, all you have to do is to level up. =)

Delta

Anonymous
Thu 26-Aug-2010 14:11
The chipophone rocks!


Cheers!
/Henrik

A case against syntax highlighting

Anonymous
Thu 26-Aug-2010 16:13

lft wrote:

Hello lft,

Syntax highlighting is simply enhancing perceptible information. It redundantly presents essential information (i.e. the code). Syntax highlight does not *add* information, it enhances it.

Do you also consider the prose example to be enhanced? My point is that enhancing and distracting are two sides of the same coin.

The prose is not enhanced because the colors don't enhance essential information. In your example, you emphasize verbs and nouns. These are an important property of linguistics, but it is not essential to recognize these words as nouns, verbs or adjectives to comprehend the story. I have no idea what "type" of words you used in all the sentences of your article, but I understood it perfectly well anyway.

To put it another way: it's not essential to know if the word "was" is a noun or a verb in the sentence "Alice was not a bit hurt", whether it is highlighted or not. But it *is* essential to know that "char" indicates a data type, whether it is highlighted or not.

lft wrote:

It's one of the basic principles of design, and since you're into typography I kinda expected you to be familiar with this.

On the contrary, a basic rule of thumb of typography is to stick to a single font. SOME people use CAPS to indicate EMPHASIS, thus BREAKING this rule. I find that it makes the text less readable.

I think you might have misunderstood my point. Contrast most definitely is one of the basic principles of design. It is brought to code in the form of syntax highlighting through colors, and brought to written language in the form of a change in size, weight, style, spacing or orientation of the typeface.

You use it on your site too: headings and subheading are written with a larger and bolder font, quoted text is encapsulated in a container that separates it from the normal text, links are underlined and have a different color than the normal text.

Your "PEOPLE WHO USE CAPS"-example is simply an example of improper use of emphasis, not a case *against* emphasis. It's like putting green text on a purple background and saying "see, syntax highlighting is evil because this particular example is unreadable!"

lft wrote:

I always smile at hardcore coders with black&white screens, who think basic principles of cognitive psychology don't apply to them :)

I'm happy to have made you smile.

This was not meant to come across as a sneer at you. I enjoyed reading the article, the comments and your reply. I think it's an interesting discussion and I'm simply trying to understand your point of view. To be honest, your rebuttals are not really convincing and often contradictory.

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Thu 26-Aug-2010 16:42
I think you should start doing practical things like changing your wallpaper/borders on your walls in that room. Stop tinkering with your toys and become a man! ;)
Anonymous
Thu 26-Aug-2010 22:26
Become a man? That dude is like the second coming of Jesus (for µControllers). I'd hire him anyday. Micocontrollers FTW

Delta

Anonymous
Fri 27-Aug-2010 09:17
The chipophone rocks!
A lot!!

The TTY demystified

Anonymous
Fri 27-Aug-2010 12:22
How to Modify the tty driver so that control-W erases the previous word typed by the user.

Turbulence

Anonymous
Sat 28-Aug-2010 07:47
Hello,
I've would like to run this demo on my propeller demo board. Can you indicate me what should I do to load the eeprom with the binary you provide ?
Thanks
Laurent

The Chipophone

Anonymous
Sat 28-Aug-2010 16:34
Utrolig kult! Lovin the 8-bit sound!

Andreas Pedersen ( www.dpadhero.com )
Anonymous
Sun 29-Aug-2010 03:54
Fantastisk apparat och verkligen kul att du berättar så mycket om hur den fungerar :-)

A case against syntax highlighting

lft
Linus Åkesson
Sun 29-Aug-2010 19:45

lft wrote:

Do you also consider the prose example to be enhanced? My point is that enhancing and distracting are two sides of the same coin.

The prose is not enhanced because the colors don't enhance essential information. In your example, you emphasize verbs and nouns. These are an important property of linguistics, but it is not essential to recognize these words as nouns, verbs or adjectives to comprehend the story. I have no idea what "type" of words you used in all the sentences of your article, but I understood it perfectly well anyway.

To put it another way: it's not essential to know if the word "was" is a noun or a verb in the sentence "Alice was not a bit hurt", whether it is highlighted or not. But it *is* essential to know that "char" indicates a data type, whether it is highlighted or not.

Oh, but it is quite essential to know what the word "was" means in order to comprehend the sentence. Part of this knowledge is the fact that the word is a verb -- although it's not essential to know that "verb" is the common terminology for this property.

Likewise, it is essential to know that "char" (or, perhaps more to the point, "person" in a piece of software where it has been declared as such) is a type. Without this knowledge, comprehension and ability to modify the code without introducing bugs would be all but impossible.

But this academic grouping has no business being at the front of the mind during programming; the programmer should be as familiar with the fundamental meaning of the word "char" as he is with the word "was". The fact that "was" and "running" have the same colour is uninteresting when reading a text, since they mean different things, and in a similar vein "char" and "person" are two different types, and it makes more sense to think of them as two separate entities in their own right, than as two instances of "type".

...

You use it on your site too: headings and subheading are written with a larger and bolder font, quoted text is encapsulated in a container that separates it from the normal text, links are underlined and have a different color than the normal text.

Your "PEOPLE WHO USE CAPS"-example is simply an example of improper use of emphasis, not a case *against* emphasis. It's like putting green text on a purple background and saying "see, syntax highlighting is evil because this particular example is unreadable!"

Good point. I see the problems with my example. Nevertheless, I maintain that while some typographic highlighting makes sense (such as indentation and extra whitespace, where it clarifies the intention of the code), automatic highlighting based on syntax is distracting because it emphasizes the shallow syntactic level of the code, rather than the deep semantic level.

This was not meant to come across as a sneer at you.

I apologize for jumping to that conclusion.