User blog comment:Kirkburn/Syntax highlighting - helping you read and write code/@comment-4783583-20150327100648/@comment-126761-20150330212512

To be honest, it's not really aimed at helping users to learn wikitext syntax (though it would probably help) - it's about helping editors recognise what is already on a page, and helping during editing as it can quickly visually flag up syntax errors.

We know not everyone wants or needs it - hence the wikitext user preference. However, it's better for it to be on by default, otherwise few would actually benefit from it.