Is there an IDE out there that does structural syntax highlighting?

Question

Somewhat inspired by this question about a graphical programming environment. I don\'t think that C++ or C# are really conducive to this type of environment, but perhaps there\

Answer 1

I think Xcode 3 does roughly what you want, especially with Focus Follows Selection enabled. Individual blocks are highlighted as you hover over them in the sidebar.

Answer 2

The closest thing that I've seen is Codekana, although doesn't have "background syntax-highlighting" it colorizes the different flow-control structures:

_{(source: codekana.com)}

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_{(source: codekana.com)}

• Red for loops
• Green for if-blocks
• Brown for else-blocks
• Aquamarine for switch-blocks
• Olive for exception blocks
• Orange for 'return'

Answer 3

Coderush does structural highlighting:

_{(source: devexpress.com)}

It quite feasible you could write your own plugin with DevExpress that achieves your exact original screen shot.

Answer 4

The current BlueJ editor does exactly what you describe:

Answer 5

The Visual Studio IDE does this already, but with a different visualization - you can expand and contract nested blocks by clicking the +/- buttons on the left margin.

Answer 6

allmargins extension works for me in visual studio 2010

Tool-->Exention Manager --> search for allmargins