For some of the reasons mentioned by other people in this thread, I don’t think glasses actually fix the problem. I have astigmatism and generally light text on a dark background is difficult to focus on.
Contacts aren’t an option because my astigmatism is strong enough that a rotation of 2 degrees throws them off.
But separately from eyesight issues I thought there was some evidence to suggest that aesthetic preferences aside, dark lettering on lighter backgrounds was still easier to read.
Have you found that a combination of the right theme and glasses makes reading from the screen for hours comfortable?
I have read about that research but I don't think we can conclude from it that dark backgrounds are a fad. They have other advantages (e.g. matching the dark room I work in) and besides, most dark themes are not pure white on black, but something less contrasting.
I've always forced myself to take a break from the screen, and for very long (book length) stuff will always either use a hard copy or ebook so perhaps my usage patterns won't match yours. I use variants of solarized style light themes, though do experiment occasionally as I've never found the definite 'answer' to the best theme for me.
I don't think the research would conclude that dark backgrounds are a fad necessarily. The reason I'm attracted to themes with darker backgrounds is that they are generally better for getting a set of text colours with roughly equal levels of legibility - whereas lighter backgrounded themes often have two or three colours which are really hard to see. The flip side is that darker colours + astigmatism seem to lead to reduced breadth of vision.
