I've been using `mc` for decades... In fact, in my early professional days as a software dev, I've written entire systems with PHP using `mcedit` (the built-in editor), because I didn't know `vim` then, and `mcedit` had syntax highlighting...

Mostly used Notepad++ or SciTE ( https://www.scintilla.org/ ) over the years, as the number of languages/platforms I traverse made it a consistent option for dealing with various document encodings etc.

I thought mc and mcedit was cool, but needed something small and portable within a fairly locked-down environment ( "No [root] for you!" as the admin would say.) =3

Wait, what? I've never seen syntax highlighting in mcedit. I'd be looking predominantly at Prolog files to be honest but those normally have a .pl extension so I should at least be seeing Perl-like highlights?

(pun totally coincidental)