An appeal to everyone to use colored terminals and do their eyes a favor.
Computer scientists do get their hands dirty - true
Computer scientists do use tools that probably only a small fraction of the Internet users has ever heard of - true
But so do car mechanics and just about every other engineer on this world. And everyone of them is trying to use the best tools available to them, or keep them in the best state possible.
As the german saying goes - an engineer is only as good as his tools
So why are a lot of hackers still using black-and-white terminals? Emacs? Software from the 80s? Look at the time to which shells date back!
do yourself a favor and check out color schemes
Your terminal emulator should be able to do more than black text on a white background. Check out the list of color schemes below. I have tried them all over time and found them to be more or less useful. Currently I am using solarized:
use a shell that works with you
You use your shell daily. There are dozens of shells superior to bash out there. Use them.
Over the past, I have tested zsh and fish. The first allows you to get up to speed fairly quickly (in part due to the great documentation), but the completion and directory naviagtion functionality is limited. I have come to love zsh for these features. While its configuration looks like hell, it is very fast and powerful.
The zsh community has begun the trend of the Oh My Shell configuration collections. They exist for both shells and allow you to get up to speed very quickly:
help making things beautiful
While these things certainly improve the current situation, new tools ought to be made. There are lots of beautiful ideas out there, for improving terminals or shells.
An idea I fancy especially is FinalTerm
Either way, everybody loves beautiful tools. So if you have an idea to improve, or build an entirely new one - don’t hesitate! The worst thing that might happen is you learning something ;-)