Using Visual Studio daily and looking at it for 9 hours a day sometimes the eyes aren’t very happy at the end of the day.
I’ve been messing with the environment settings and the stock setup (basically black and a few colors on pure white) just burns into my retinas. Looking around the generally accepted modification is white and bright colors on black:
I find this far too stark and not much better than black on hot white.
My current setup, which seems to be a bit better, is this:
Less stark contrast, slightly bigger font size and much more comfortable to look at all day.
If anyone can show their modified color scheme for their environment, if you find it purposely more comfortable for staring at all day, I’d be really appreciative.
Any opinion on good and comfortable color schemes for readable text and/or screen shots of your text editor are very welcome.
I like your current setup, black screens with bright text give me a headache after a while. Honestly though, I find that the best thing to reduce eyestrain is to look out the window for about 30 seconds every 5 mins or so. Alternatively, if there is no window then letting your eyes lose focus for a few seconds (preferably whilst not pointed at the computer screen) seems to be a help too.
I know that wasn’t what you asked but that’s what I found helps me. 
Same here. I can’t see what it’s such a popular setup. So far the light gray background I use seems to cause the least strain. Lowering the contrast on the monitor helps a bit as well but if you do graphic work that may not be an option.
Dark text on a light background is proven to be the easiest on the eyes. I feel your pain though. My eyes have been killing me for weeks…so much that I’ve had to significantly increase the text size on my computer. Its a bit more difficult to go through long pieces of code with a large font, but its definitely easier on my eyes.
It’s strange, if I get a migraine, looking at a computer monitor is actually more bearable to me than direct sunlight or light-bulbs. I could stare at a computer ad infinitum and not suffer any kind of side effects. I use Notepad++ which is white by default.
I agree with the high contrast colors on a grey background. Best setup I have personally found.
I much prefer working on a light grey background.