Also, by modifying the intensities of text such that regular symbols and logic and numbers are fairly dark (or high-contrast), while strings and comments are relatively light, it becomes easier to skim across blocks of code to locate what you're looking for.
Certainly too much color and pizazz can be a distraction. The feature is usually customizable, so take advantage of that and create a scheme that works for you.
aka SyntaxHighlighting aka ChromaCoding? (in Borland's IDE, an early (1990?) implementation of this feature)