Although syntax highlighting looks nice, I write software at work using Visual Studio, which includes syntax highlighting. And I don't really care if it's there or not. Sure, on occasion, I might be able to more quickly find something with it, but that's pretty uncommon. I basically just ignore the colors completely and it ends up being just like it would be if the text was all black. Some may like it, and I certainly don't mind it, but it is certainly not a necessary thing to have.
Now, the one thing I do like having that is somewhat related to syntax highlighting is syntax autocompletion. It's handy to be able to more quickly type some things out by starting the code and hitting tab to finish it. But that's a different beast than highlighting even though it goes together.
