I spend a lot of time in front of the computer. In the last 15-20 years I had an obsession to have all my backgrounds black or dark themed in some way or another. Dark terminal, dark Visual Studio Code, dark CaptureOne, dark websites.
In the past years, I’ve noticed that my sight when looking far away has been deteriorating. I’ve had a hard time distinguishing writings on buildings that were usually easy for me to read. Also, I’ve had numerous episodes of dizziness and blurred vision in the center of my focus point. These were awful. For a couple of hours I felt like going blind and it’s very scary.
The solution was so simple: I’ve switched to white backgrounds.
Turns out that the advice and the trend that goes on in the programming community towards dark themes, with the goal of not creating eye strain, has the opposite effect on me. There is also an added benefit: I understand faster what I read and memorize better.
There is a study though that found that reading black text on white background might stimulate myopia in the long term: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x . It makes me wonder whether the short term gain will have an adverse effect in the future.