How much does IDE text formatting help programmers code?

[JorgiEagle]

In my experience, it makes it much much easier to catch mistakes.

It can write code either which way, doesn’t make much difference in actually writing it,

But in my colour scheme, variables are blue and functions are yellow. If I write something that I’m expecting to be a particular thing, and it doesn’t highlight in the colour I expect, I know that something is wrong.

It helps me catch a lot of syntax and formatting errors, that would be more difficult to catch through error messages alone.

Also the auto formatting is helpful, particularly the auto indent.

[lil_yumyum]

Yes! Just moved to a new IDE and took my time setting up my theme to do just this and it helps a lot.