I have a hard time seeing why this is such a popular theme.. maybe it's just because it is available for so many different editors. On the other hand, would be cool to have an application / database that could convert any theme to another editor.
Although that would take a lot of work to figure out the compatibilities, if somebody would do that well enough so that other people can configure input output configs for that, I bet that program could become very popular among developers.
I have a few thoughts on why this is such a popular theme:
1. Decentralized Contributors: every theme is maintained by a different person. There's no single point of failure when it comes to software maintainability.
2. Centralized Discoverability: most themes are scattered and disorganized. The cool thing about Dracula is that you can find everything in one place.
3. Transparency: on the website, you can see the number of views for each theme, who are the people behind them, how much sales were made. Everything is open, and that creates trust.
4. Constraints: Dracula is only available in dark mode, despite having TONS of requests to have a light theme as well. People complain about constraints (think of Twitter's 140 character limit), but constraints make good products.
5. Consistency: not only in terms of colors, but in terms of effort. The first Dracula theme was created in 2013, and the project has kept evolving since then.
6. Portability: developers want an environment that feels uniform. There's a real cost associated with context switch, so having a theme available for 227 apps across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS is very important.
7. Branding: why make something boring when you can make it fun? The name, the logo, the icons, the visual aesthetics - it
all counts.
8. Personal: the origin story described on the About page is extremely personal. For years I was afraid of making it public on the internet. Now I know that when you make yourself vulnerable, people feel connected.
> why make something boring when you can make it fun?
I think all your points are completely, well, on... point. However, the last 2 are really the meat of what I think others can learn from when trying to replicate the success this has seen. They are also, imo, the hardest. Branding takes time, effort and skill which not everyone has. You can recruit help for this, but that requires buy in. Making it personal can achieve this, but as you said, it can necessitate vulnerability which is a bridge most of us just can't quite bring ourselves to cross.
Thank you for your efforts and for adding to the discussion here. I for one really appreciate it.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I can see how that drives popularity, and yes now that I think about it the consistency of your efforts are what made me become aware of your theme also, so congrats on keeping at it and achieving what you have achieved :)
I have actually tried to like the theme at some point, just because the appeal of having similar color schemes in multiple environments was there, but many times noticed the color theme is just not for me. So I can understand also the psychological effect having this kind of branding and the social effect that can have also.
Thanks for sharing your insight, being a startup founder I can relate to many of these points.
> 7. Branding: why make something boring when you can make it fun?
This is pretty much how I first found Dracula. I was looking to make my VSCode editor more fun and someone linked https://computecuter.com which included Dracula in the example themes.
My reading: There’s a clear identity – visually and in how it’s framed. Also a clear social signal (“this is what developers like you use!” plus a social status feel). One central site. The social attention mechanics: I see this, I get the sense that others have seen it or will see it. Doesn’t feel eccentric. Crafted to give a feeling of a common substrate. Slightly indie take on a clean and colorful look with a cartoon character that has mild stylistic tension in a very common art style – it’s palatable. It’s reassuring and tells a story. The PRO messaging also seems to successfully indicate that “because this costs money it’s worth something”. And while it’s all very programmer-normcore it’s also slightly unusual in all these respects and this induces curiosity.
This is a fantastic summation, this put into words the exact feelings I have about it; which is a hard thing to do. It can be hard to vocalize things that are very internal and feeling-based, which is what branding association is
> maybe it's just because it is available for so many different editors
There's definitely an appeal for me in this. I flip between VSCode, Rider and Visual Studio on both Windows and Mac these days, and having the theme/layout consistent across all the applications definitely helps ease the transitions (along with trying to keep bindings for various operations the same across the board).
> if somebody would do that well enough so that other people can configure input output configs for that, I bet that program could become very popular among developers.
Honest question, how much would you pay for it? Would you pay $60? Bearing in mind that in theory this would let you use any theme of your choice on your editor of choice.
Dracula looks pretty good, Dracula Pro looks much better because they did a lot of research for the colors (but it is expensive), and Dracula UI looks fantastic.
In their defense, browsing from Bucharest, the Pro page shows me this:
> Hey! You're coming from Romania where this could be too expensive. I believe in Purchasing Parity Power, and I want to make this affordable. If you need it, use the code ROPRO for an extra 52% off the regular price.
Now that you've posted it here, I predict the Dracula folks will see an enormous increase in the use of the ROPRO code by "Romanian" developers living all around the world.
Well, I'm guessing they'll need to keep a Romania IP active in a VPN when they're paying, and I got my card locked a couple of times doing that kind of thing.
They have multiple countries, Mexico discount is 53% and I took it. I guess if someone wants to take advantage of this will seek the highest discount country, wonder which one is.
Lots of people in replies below have speculated on branding/availability, &c. For me I literally found it on a site that showed code and you could switch between different themes. I liked Dracula the best. If it hadn't been available for Vim, probably 50-50 on whether or not I would have taken the time to port it to Vim. It doesn't take too long once you have all the color codes.
If someone could build a tool that somehow allowed you to set generic tokens like "heading text color", "body text color"... etc, while potentially including contrast warnings in case you mess up
And then automatically generate the theme files for all these apps - now that would be simply amazing!
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At least for me, since I maintain my own personal VSCode/IntelliJ theme
It doesn't support nearly as many programs as dracula theme does but I'd recommend giving https://themer.dev/ a try. Supports all the popular terminals, IDEs and then some.
> On the other hand, would be cool to have an application / database that could convert any theme to another editor.
I added support for the GtkSourceView XML format to my personal editor (which uses Rouge for syntax highlighting, so my loader can work for anything that uses Rouge), and so I could test Dracula just by searching for "gedit" which uses GtkSourceView, and I wish more apps would coalesce around common theming formats... The proliferation of different configuration methods for theming is quite pointless.
At least, if people wish to use a custom format it'd certainly be good if they provided converters for a couple of the popular formats.
I used to love this theme (you can even see it in my old screenshots https://github.com/talha-akram/anvil) but over time I started to prefer lower contrast themes now the same neon colors are jarring to me.
I think that if you like how it looks then you would want to use it in as many apps as possible. My main editor has several themes that are copies of themes from other apps so its not something that is unique to Dracula.
Although that would take a lot of work to figure out the compatibilities, if somebody would do that well enough so that other people can configure input output configs for that, I bet that program could become very popular among developers.