I also want to add to this: I write code in such a way that I shouldn't need to be referencing multiple files because each file exposes a clear interface. As long as the interface makes sense with the rest of the program I shouldn't need to think about the specifics of it and should be able to populate the interface as naturally as shifting gears whilst driving
Hi, younger programmer here who's first programming experience was Visual Studio and .NET (that's a lie my first programming experience was a decade earlier with yabasic and notepad but given that I only ran about three programs I'm loathe to count it) my tiny laptop struggled to run Visual Studio and I was working a lot in server admin so naturally started using vi. Vi came without any modern features and when I tried to move back to Vs code I hated it so much. The screen was so busy and every time I typed something I was distracted by 100 different suggestions, sometimes I would accidentally press a key and paste a load of code in I didn't need. By this time I had already gotten proficient at vi keybindings, got any information about an API I needed from scouring the documentation/manpages(please every one make a lot more manpages). I then decided to see how much I could strip back without really affecting productivity. Anyway a few months ago I switched off syntax highlighting and now other people's editors look like a mess to me. Anyway I love that I can program in any environment on any machine as long as a text editor is available. Makes me feel like I'm not beholden to Microsoft or jetbrains when they inevitably tighten the licenses and I think it makes me a better programmer because I have to read and think about the APIs I'm calling.
tl;dr modern ide's abstract you away from compilation pipelines and make you more reliant on intellisense than reading docs. Syntax highlighting is a psyop designed to kill the art.