Impact of syntax coloring on program comprehension https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2006/files/sarkar_2015_syntax_colouring.pdf "syntax highlighting significantly improves task completion time"
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On the tendency for short term software design decisions to impact thousands of people for years:
Automation does not seem to have much of an impact: people are rarely forced to change industry, companies are not investing heavily in AI, and productivity growth is slow: https://www.wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/
An ARM engineer has written an interesting critique of instruction and encoding choices in RISC-V, and how those decisions can impact implementations:
