If you're in charge of development, then you should be very aware that you don't prioritize something that has fairly low usefulness over something that has high usefulness. As has been stated, syntax highlighting is not very important, yet there are many other features that are very important. Development needs to start with the important things and if there is time and money left, only then do you add in minor things.
In the end, it doesn't really matter much if other IRC clients have syntax highlighting. I have yet to see any other client with a scripting language that is anywhere near what mIRC's is. People who want scripting ability will almost always choose mIRC regardless of syntax highlighting because it's by far the most in-depth scripting language in IRC clients.
Also, you do develop software for the customer. mIRC's customers aren't all scripters. And, in fact, most are not scripters. So syntax highlighting is far less important for the majority of users than fixing bugs, improving SSL, and adding a variety of other far more requested features. It's important to you, but not to most users (perhaps as many as 90% of users wouldn't care, but that's just my estimate based on years of reading posts here and listening to people on IRC).
And to be clear, I support adding it. However, I don't support adding it before adding more requested features that benefit far more people.
Btw, I never said mIRC scripting should be Visual Studio. My comment was solely about the fact that I use syntax highlighting with an explanation of where I use it.
