When I was a teenager I preferred white text on a black background. (Think of the DOS terminal.)
In my very early 20s, I suddenly found white text on a black background extremely irritating. Suddenly, my vision was filled with persisting horizontal lines. (Like what you get when you look quickly at a light bulb.)
Maybe it's because DOS was really grey on black, but on the web, people typically do bright white on black?
I've always preferred a sepia type color scheme. The HN default colors are pretty close to perfect for me. Solarized Dark color scheme is about as dark as I like to get. Going full black background on white text has always been hard for me to read.
When I was a teenager I took a big dose of what I thought was blotter acid. I ended up with HPPD and ever since I have trouble looking at dark text on a white background. Sucks... I used to be a speed reader and now I'm maybe only a little faster than average.
My normal color scheme is a slightly modified 'desert' theme that comes with vim.
Web era began around the rise of LCD displays. CRTs are too non-linear for most people to tolerate black on white, so its a status symbol from around the turn of the century to do white on black.
Not helping matters is the rise of glossy distraction screens, again before the turn of the century the status symbol was ultra low glare matte screens to avoid eyestrain and with the conversion to everything must be shiny its hard to look at a black background reflecting tons of distracting moving shadows so everything must have a white light blackground to cut thru the bright distracting reflections.
> CRTs are too non-linear for most people to tolerate black on white
What does non-linear mean? And what do you mean tolerate?
Before LCD screens all Macs were black-on-white and people loved it. The first Macs were monochrome. I don't recall anyone ever having a problem with it.
Also, I don't remember any matte CRTs -- they're all glossy because their surface is glass.
Also early computers with monochrome CRTs often shipped with actual silk screen pressed between the case and CRT. It was a trade-off, you'd lose a bit of sharpness but there would be no room reflection whatsoever. The Kaypro 10 was a dream machine in its time, it had a bare CRT with a 'matte' glass surface that had been slightly etched. Sharp characters with no layer of silk in the way.
I still emulate the Kaypro 10 with its dull/bright green on black phosphors for coding.
> Web era began around the rise of LCD displays. CRTs are too non-linear for most people to tolerate black on white, so its a status symbol from around the turn of the century to do white on black.
How does this account for things like Atari TOS, MacOS, OS/2 or any early version of Windows that all mainly use black on white for text? The "web era" depending on how you define it could of course have coincided with the LCD era (though in my experience happened more than half a decade earlier, which is generations in computer technology time) but the web didn't somehow invent black text on white backgrounds.
I still prefer dark background with white text to this day, even when the web came around I tried to keep all my software/OS with dark background/white text. To this day I'll try to use "night mode" if available.
It's so much less strain on the eyes, especially during the night or after waking up. Going from darkness to a blazing white screen literally hurts in the eyes.
When I'm forced to use black-on-white (i.e. when browsing most of the web), I find that reduced brightness and increased monitor colour temperature helps a lot.
In my very early 20s, I suddenly found white text on a black background extremely irritating. Suddenly, my vision was filled with persisting horizontal lines. (Like what you get when you look quickly at a light bulb.)
Maybe it's because DOS was really grey on black, but on the web, people typically do bright white on black?