A round-up of The Week Without Colorful Prompt.

I worked with the colors disabled in bash, git, and vim for a week. So how did it go? It is definitely an interesting experience, but such a harsh change that it doesn’t really work out with everything.

Bash

Disabling colorful PS1 and removing color output for ls commands forced me to concentrate more on the actual text, changing the perception of the general bash workflow. I was more concentrated on the task, missed less details, and generally paid more attention to the output.

Git

Never repeat my mistake by disabling colors for git diff. Log and status are fairly easy to read, but the disabling of colors noticeably slows down the workflow.

Vim

Vim without code highlight forces you to remember your code structure more effectively, which is a great thing. Not having a need to rely on color can hint that a programmer has better understanding of the code he/she is writing.

Now that the experiment is over I have mostly returned to using colorful prompt. But I do turn syntax highlight off once in a while - it allows you to see problems from new angle and work more efficiently at finding a solution. Try it and see for yourself!

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