87% of websites color syntax with JavaScript on the frontend

Study by Ova Fusca Úniversity (OFÚ) reveals that 87% of websites that publish code color it with JavaScript libraries: “The backend no longer paints anything”

Eggsfield, Pennyslvania, May 28, 2026

A team of researchers from Ova Fusca Úniversity (OFÚ), in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Syntax Highlighting (UPRS), has concluded, after analyzing more than 14 million web pages, that 87.3% of sites displaying source code do so exclusively with client-side JavaScript libraries.

The report, titled “Highlight.js Killed the Backend: Chronicle of a Death Foretold”, confirms what many already suspected: server-side syntax highlighting is now an archaeological relic. The authors of the study, Drs. Rojo Fuerte and Despala Brejas, appeared this morning visibly moved and flushed with color in the faculty press room.

“This is no longer a trend, it is a technological genocide,” exclaimed Oliver Despala while holding a chart. “Ten years ago you still saw people using Pygments or Rouge. Nowadays, finding code highlighted or colored from the backend is as rare as someone who does not panic when they run out of tokens,” Marco Rojo added.

They estimate that moving all highlighting to the backend would save the world an amount of energy equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. Or, in other words, enough energy to evaporate 28,000 Olympic swimming pools. The equivalent in Cristiano Ronaldos is unknown.

Two software engineers looking concerned behind a screen showing colored code. Behind them, a server rack covered in cobwebs.
Stupid AI-generated illustration because I am poor.

Among the study’s most alarming findings:

  • 72% of the surveyed authors would not consider it an improvement if highlighting ran on the backend. 96% were not even sure where it was actually running.
  • Official framework documentation has completely abandoned server-side rendering of code. Even JSP documentation.
  • Only three blogs abandoned since 2012 and the instruction manual for a Cisco router keep the flame of backend syntax highlighting alive.

“We are raising a generation that believes code is born already painted in colors,” lamented Oliver Despala Brejas. “Before, the server returned a nice <pre> with its CSS cascade honoring its acronym (Cascade of Styled Shit). Now everything is a JavaScript festival that runs in our browsers again and again. It is robbery!”

The researchers propose urgent measures:

  • A discount voucher of at least 20% on orange cheese puffs for developers who do the coloring from the backend.
  • A green tax on every JS library weighing more than 40KB.
  • The creation of the “Backend Police,” with authority to shut down static websites that use more than 20% of the CPU, and all those that use more than 80%.

At the end of the presentation, Marco Rojo Fuerte loaded a website with a code fragment colored from the backend in 2014: clean, using only three colors, and in Java. The room observed a minute of silence while watching the CPU monitor needle not move even one degree. “This,” he said, his voice breaking, “was true engineering. What we do now is smash keyboards like apes. And may the apes forgive me.”

The full report (statically generated, without JavaScript, as God intended) can be downloaded at: https://ovafusca.com/downloads/E1pxE0yy.