Colours for your Code
How to improve readability, fun and break the monotonicity
Most articles talk about how to improve your productivity or the latest hack to get into a state of deep work. I do believe knowing these aspects is incredibly useful and boosts your workflow.
However, today I want to talk about two incredible mentally soothing features I have come around while working with VS Code and a few other platforms. Let us first talk about colours. Every time you look at the screen you either see the option to set a black or white theme. Or you can set it to Dracula or you can set it to True Black or Off-White or the next coolest theme. A number of these themes greatly improve readability and in turn your overall productivity. But have you ever stopped to wonder if they improve your mental health?
It’s been almost a year or even more for most people where we have ‘Worked From Our Computer’. A lot of our time goes into looking at screens of different dimensions and for most coders, this time is spent looking at editors, browsers, notes, and communications tools. I too use VS Code, Chrome, Bear, and Slack as my daily go-to tools. Let me now introduce the first exciting feature:
Colours
I’m sure all of you have your favourite colour or theme. What works for me is the theme Shades of Purple (VS Code) developed by Ahmad Awais. You can catch a few glimpses above. Now, I’m not advocating that this theme alone is the best one, but hear me out about why should spend some time finding something that works for you. For me, just having these colours on the screen completely changes my perception of work and puts me in a happy mood. I love looking at these colours so much that I’ve adopted them for Slack, Chrome, Bear (close enough), and even for my iPhone/iPad/Laptop wallpapers. Having a theme that works across platforms provides you with a much-needed consistency.
VSCode-Pets
I know most of you who used Microsoft Office in the early 2000s remember Clippy, the little metal clip that talked, did fun animations and provided help on-screen. Now with VS Code, Anthony Shaw developed this ultra-cool extension for VS Code which lets you personalize your pet. It even plays with a ball and you can choose between a cat, dog, Clippy, and even a snake or duck! Now that’s something I can get behind. It has animations and you can switch up its size too.
Slack/Chrome/Bear:
The links below point to the Shades of Purple theme for Chrome & Slack and the first picture provides the wallpaper I use across my devices. For Bear Notes I use the Dracula theme to simulate the purple theme.
Hopefully, this is useful for some of you. I hope to hear from you guys about what helps you keep sane while spending long hours online.
