秋葉原 ・ Akihabara: A Night in Tokyo — Code Color Theory

Akihabara includes four variants:

• Akihabara Light - a soft-white workbench with the same code colors
• Akihabara Dark - the original night-street palette
• Akihabara OLED - a true-black workbench with the same code colors
• Akihabara Experimental - a royal violet and antique-gold workbench with the same code colors

Example (C++)

Akihabara at night is neon over black: vivid signals guiding calm movement. This theme maps that idea to code: each concept = a color family, and each sub-role = a nearby hue. Your eyes learn the category before your brain parses the token.

Designed for long sessions: high contrast on black, saturated but disciplined accents, and semantic consistency so big codebases feel navigable—not noisy.

Table of Contents

• Order of Concepts (and why)
• Color Design Philosophy
• Keywords / Control 🟪
• Definitions / Primitives 🟡
• State / Storage 🟢/🧊
• Action / Transformation 🔵
• Parameters 🟧
• Values / Information 🔴
• Documentation 🩶
• Quick Mental Model
• Color Table
• Installation
• Recommendations
• Language Support
• Development and Contributing
• Feedback
• Credits

Order of Concepts (and why)

1. Keywords / Control 🟪 — shapes and directs execution
2. Definitions / Primitives 🟡 — declares identity and atoms
3. State / Storage 🟢/🧊 — where things live and how they’re organized
4. Action / Transformation 🔵 — what code does (movement/change)
5. Parameters 🟧 — handoff points at call/def sites
6. Values / Information 🔴 — the data itself

This descends by scope impact: structure → identity → containers → operations → interfaces → payload.

Color Design Philosophy

• One family per concept for instant recognition: Control 🟪, Types/Literals 🟡, State 🟢/🧊, Actions 🔵, Parameters 🟧, Values 🔴.
• Hue drift within the family clarifies sub-roles (e.g., function vs. method both 🔵, but adjacent blues).
• Thermal logic: hot payload 🔴 vs. cool machinery 🔵🟪; ground 🟢/🧊 stabilizes; identity 🟡 and handoff 🟧 annotate.

Keywords / Control 🟪

Intent: Flow words are signage—they route, they do not carry. A unified purple keeps the skeleton obvious and prevents “rainbow control.”

Includes:

• Branching, looping, transfer, exceptions, labels
• Visibility and declaration keywords (class, struct, namespace, enum, union, template, access specifiers, scope ::)

Why purple? 🟪 It reads as structural and slightly formal—great for “map first, details later.”

Definitions / Primitives 🟡

Intent: Declare what things are (types) and the fixed atoms in source (literals).

Includes:

• Fundamental and user types (incl. enum/class names)
• Literal tokens (numbers, booleans, strings, enumerators)

Why yellow? 🟡 It pops early in peripheral vision—ideal for type identity and atomic constants without competing with control (🟪) or calls (🔵).

State / Storage 🟢/🧊

Intent: The ground and containers—where information lives and how it’s organized.

Includes:

• Namespaces, classes, and other scope/ownership carriers

Why green→teal? 🟢 implies stability/ground; drift toward 🧊 (teal/cyan) hints structured, persistent context (namespaces/classes) without reading as “action.”

Action / Transformation 🔵

Intent: The waterworks—things that move or reshape data.

Includes:

• Functions and methods (with a subtle hue split to signal free vs. state-aware actions)

Why blue? 🔵 Cool = motion/change, complementary to hot data 🔴 and separate from routing 🟪.

Parameters 🟧

Intent: Handoff points—the interface binding values to operations and state.

Includes:

• Function and method parameters at both declaration and call sites

Why orange? 🟧 Warm enough to relate to data 🔴, distinct enough to read as an interface, not payload or control.

Values / Information 🔴

Intent: The lifeblood—actual data in motion or at rest.

Includes:

• Constants, locals, members (with variations for lifetime/scope while staying in-family)

Why red? 🔴 High salience indicates “this carries content,” clearly apart from machinery (🔵🟪).

Documentation 🩶

Muted guidance that recedes but remains legible. (They should never shout over the code map.)

Quick Mental Model

• See purple 🟪 → “this routes”
• See yellow 🟡 → “this defines / is a literal”
• See green/teal 🟢/🧊 → “this contains / organizes”
• See blue 🔵 → “this acts”
• See orange 🟧 → “this interfaces (params)”
• See red 🔴 → “this is the data”

Color Table

Family	Type	Hex	Swatch Name
Control 🟪	Branching (if, else, switch) Looping (for, while, do) Transfer (return, break, continue) Exceptions (try, catch, throw) Access & declarations (public, private, class, namespace, ::), etc.	#7757BA	Royal Purple
Definitions / Primitives 🟡	Type identifiers (built-ins & user types; enum/class names, e.g., int, void)	#CBBB52	Old Gold
Definitions / Primitives 🟡	Literals — numbers, booleans, strings, enum values (e.g., 42, true, "hello")	#70AF6B	Asparagus
State / Storage 🟢/🧊	Namespace (organizational scope; not instanced, e.g., std::)	#15A284	Zomp
State / Storage 🟢/🧊	Class (owns/organizes object state, e.g., MyClass as type)	#0EA3A5	Light Sea Green
Action / Transformation 🔵	Function (free, stateless transform, e.g., func())	#00A5E0	Picton Blue
Action / Transformation 🔵	Method (state-aware transform, e.g., obj.method())	#06A3C6	Pacific Cyan
Parameters 🟧	Function/method parameters (per-call inputs/outputs, e.g., param in func(param))	#D77F43	Caramel
Values / Information 🔴	Constants (immutable values, e.g., const PI)	#A8304B	Amaranth Purple
Values / Information 🔴	Local variables (short-lived, scoped, e.g., int x)	#D53D5C	Cerise
Values / Information 🔴	Member variables (object state / fields, e.g., obj.member)	#A7447C	Magenta Haze
Documentation 🩶	Comments (subtle, legible, e.g., // comment)	#514867	English Violet
Documentation 🩶	Doxygen (light highlight, e.g., // @brief, @class)	#604E87	Ultra Violet

Installation

Install directly from the Visual Studio Marketplace, or search for "Akihabara" in VS Code Extensions.

Recommendations

• Font: Fira Code Retina (with ligatures enabled).
• Consider disabling Bracket Pair Colorization in VS Code settings—this lets Akihabara’s syntax accents handle structure without interference.

Language Support

Akihabara uses language-neutral TextMate scopes plus semantic token colors to carry its concept-to-color system across language families. The repository maintains visual fixtures for 44 VS Code language modes spanning application, systems, web, data, scripting, configuration, and infrastructure work.

See LANGUAGE_SUPPORT.md for the complete catalog, grammar requirements, fixtures, filename aliases, and coverage workflow.

Development and Contributing

Akihabara is open source under the MIT License. Contributions and derivative themes are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the public fork workflow and DEVELOPMENT.md for setup, preview, packaging, and release instructions.

Normal commits and pushes update GitHub only; Marketplace publishing is a separate, explicit maintainer action.

Feedback

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improving this theme, please open an issue on GitHub.

Credits

Semantic Rainbow - The color design for this theme was heavily inspired by thertzlor's "Semantic Rainbow" design philosophy.