{"id":5616,"date":"2019-04-03T20:31:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T15:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?p=5616"},"modified":"2020-04-05T21:32:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T16:32:47","slug":"1-million-developers-using-shades-of-purple-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/1-million-developers-using-shades-of-purple-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83c\udfa8 1 Million+ Developer Users of My Shades of Purple Theme"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\ud83d\ude4c Howdy! This piece is a part of my 2018 Year in Review (read the context)<\/a> \u2192<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That’s right. Something incredibly amazing happened last year. After switching to VSCode<\/a>, I struggled with finding a good theme that was actually built for VSCode and not just a theme migrated from another editor.<\/p>\n

So, I built this suit of themes called \ud83e\udd84 Shades of Purple<\/code> for VSCode<\/a>, iTerm2<\/a>, Hyper Terminal<\/a>, Slack<\/a>, AlfredApp<\/a>, HighlightJS<\/a>, Prism React<\/a>, Code Surfer<\/a>, and even got community contributions in the form of the same theme being ported for Cygwin<\/a> and Konsole<\/a>. Proud of it, AH!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\"Shades<\/a><\/div>\n
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\u2705 When you build something to solve your own problems and share it with others (especially as a Free & Open Source Software) chances are it can click well with them. This is exactly what happened here.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd14 I was building the LMS platform to host my VSCode.pro<\/a> course. I would code the same logic as the video end event in JavaScript, PHP, Go-lang, CSS, and HTML. So, a variable like videoEnd<\/code> had representation in all these languages. Interesting?!<\/p>\n

\u274c Guess what? Every programming language would color the variables different. At one time I had yellow, blue, pink, red, and green colors as the syntax highlighting for the same damn variable across different languages. That would mess my brain up.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd2f So, I went ahead and built a theme that’s consistent enough across 30+ languages and is inspired by many great themes. I got a couple of designer friends to review the theme’s design and worked on its accessibility.<\/p>\n

\u26a1\ufe0f This project quickly became my favorite side-project and has helped me become a better programmer. I know the data types by their color (so when things go wrong my brain can pick it up before a linter does). Amazing!<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude2e What happened with the Shades of Purple project was beyond any kind of growth I have ever seen for my open source software. Maybe it’s the awesome VSCode community or just maybe for once I created something really useful. Who knows. Check out the stats:<\/p>\n

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  • Over a million developer users of my theme<\/strong> \u2014 wow that puts things in perspective. I mean serious-f***-ly (pardon my french).<\/li>\n
  • I’ve released over a hundred version updates<\/strong> for the entire suite of Shade of Purple themes. All that in one year. #TrueThat!<\/li>\n
  • I feel like I connect with so many developers on a daily basis. A simple theme update can make their lives easier. They know I care.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  • An average developer spends several hours daily writing code. So, thousands of developers use my theme for several hours daily<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  • It feels like I’ve created sort of a Facebook (without creepy privacy issues of course) where all my users are my people (I mean developers). It feels good to keep improving it in an agile-manner.<\/li>\n
  • Check out the small bit of sorcery I pulled off for potential time-travel using my Emoji-log<\/a> git commit spec to build an automated Changelog<\/a> that’s actually worth a read (excuse the course ad, gotta support all this free and open source work to put food on the table).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    WOW! OK, maybe that’s too much. But hey, I love it. Shades of Purple theme has created the sort of a geeky #PurpleRevolution<\/strong>. Everyone knows I love the purple color. Purple is genius<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Peace! \u270c\ufe0f<\/p>\n

    Go ahead and install the \ud83e\udd84 Shades of Purple VSCode theme<\/a> \u2192<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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    \ud83d\ude07 Humbled! <\/p>\n

    My open source\ud83e\udd84 Shades of Purple VS @Code<\/a> theme is now used by 702,335+ developers & with 1,107,405+ million downloads. <\/p>\n

    I built it for my https:\/\/t.co\/Dam4TeERKD<\/a> power user course + love for \ud83d\udc9c
    Now 4th most popular VSCode theme<\/p>\n

    Install\u2192 https:\/\/t.co\/Lhnq0QnSSI<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/IbuF8buFZe<\/a><\/p>\n

    — Ahmad Awais (@MrAhmadAwais) January 8, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n