Ryan wrote:
Green has a meaning of "Go" or of "this is ok" in many cultures. Making either side green gives a bias to the diff. Similarly with red. Red means "Stop" or "this is not ok". Many people associate red with blood, and green with nature.
When the French created the new color scheme, they assigned no meaning to the colors, and neither should we. You can associate any meaning with any color and find fault with any one of them... Yellow means "hate" in other cultures. Blue means "move over, police!". The possibilities are endless. Let's just make everything gray... Oh no, grey depresses me...
Fact is, red/green is good for inline diffs, but any other color is fair game for side-by-side diffs.