24 ms·

Hack: A typeface designed for source code

521 points by erickhill 11y ago

kenOfYugen 11y ago
Enjoy using it in my terminal and sublime text editor. I slightly prefer it over Manaco/Menlo ..
blt 11y ago
Now that I have a 4k monitor, I notice how unrefined the shapes of most programming fonts are. Of course this is on purpose and the right choice for typical resolutions, but it would be cool if someone designed a bit more elegant monospace font for 4k displays.
- knuxus 11y ago
  Try Fira Code, thats the one I use. Compared just now to Hack and still prefer the curves and shapes of a good old Fira font.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  FWIW, Inconsolata was designed to look good and elegant at large sizes in print, so it should fit the bill quite well.
  - fjarlq 11y ago
    I like Inconsolata[1] a lot. I prefer the version of Inconsolata with straight quotes[2]. [1]: http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html [2]: http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/ http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...
- jpolitz 11y ago
  One suggestion is Triplicate (http://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html http://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html), which looks _awesome_ at high resolutions.
  - pimlottc 11y ago
    Oddly enough, that site does not seem to allow deep links, even to a sales page.
    - jpolitz 11y ago
      I contacted the site's author, the link should work now.
- err4nt 11y ago
  I have really enjoyed the look of 'Source Code Pro', an open-source monospace font designed by Adobe. It pairs well with Source Sans Pro for sans-serif text. Not only do all of my editors use 'Source Code Pro' but I also often use it to display monospaced text on websites because of how clear and legible it is for reading as well as coding. I cant wait to put Hack to the test, but for me the ultimate test will be if it can displace Source Code Pro from my editor!
- LeoNatan25 11y ago
  Source Code Pro and Consolas are the best ones for me on high DPI displays. SCP is also very good on normal displays.
sagichmal 11y ago
Nice. Reminds me of http://input.fontbureau.com http://input.fontbureau.com, a little bit softer.
- gnuvince 11y ago
  I just found Input yesterday, and I really like it. Hack doesn't come out well in Emacs (letters are way too spaced), so I'll stick with Input.
ufo 11y ago
I found the glyph for zero really ugly and attention grabbing
- coldtea 11y ago
  That's the idea, it should draw attention that it's not capital "o". Ugly though, it's not.
teamhappy 11y ago
Comparison with Fira Mono at 12px: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140470 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140470 I'll stick with Fira.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Is it just me or is screenshot comparison useless on mobile?
  - teamhappy 11y ago
    Fira: https://imgur.com/nbzZsxi https://imgur.com/nbzZsxi Hack: https://imgur.com/X2qLx8H https://imgur.com/X2qLx8H
- timdorr 11y ago
  Here's the same with Source Code Pro: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140474 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140474 I'm liking the asterisk and kerning in general. It's taller, so it feels a little more cramped between lines. That might be a dealbreaker for some.
  - MengerSponge 11y ago
    I think you've made a mistake. The a glyph in your demo doesn't look like the glyph in the Github repository...
- perlpimp 11y ago
  Fira at low res without antialiasing and without retina display looks right. I'd choose fira.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  The 'f' is really ugly, and the * not being centered is a shame (it's used so much in source code for ⨉, it really should be vertically centered), but the reduced number of serifs is nice. I also like how === has less spacing between the lines, which fits common source code conventions which use = for underlines and horizontal rules.
bberrry 11y ago
I desperately want to find a new code font to love but I always return to Consolas.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  Ditto. On linux I fancy terminus though.
  - kjak 11y ago
    I really like Terminus. I started using it last year and I'd be hard-pressed to switch to anything else.
    - durdn 11y ago
      Seconded. Terminus is really amazing. But I've been trying Hack for a change after many years of Terminus and I find it rather pleasing.
- seunosewa 11y ago
  Same situation here, except that it's Courier New that I always return to.
  - teamhappy 11y ago
    Have you looked at Courier Prime? I like it a lot. http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ // Looks like they've added Courier Prime Code.
- dingaling 11y ago
  For a complete change of style it might be worth having a look at fonts designed assisting those with dyslexia. Designed for uniqueness of glyphs and for minimising eye strain. https://gumroad.com/l/OpenDyslexic# https://gumroad.com/l/OpenDyslexic# http://dyslite.com/home/download/dyslite-mono-dyslexic/ http://dyslite.com/home/download/dyslite-mono-dyslexic/ I've used them for several years ( even though I'm not dyslexic ) and now find 'normal' terminal fonts to be extremely harsh on the eye. Probably the best change I've ever made to my programming environment.
Kequc 11y ago
On OSX put the ttf's into your ~/Library/Fonts directory. I've switched, Atom looks subtly different, but I'm surprisingly comfortable with it. Looks good.
- mattkrea 11y ago
  I'm loving it. It makes a great terminal font as well.
- Watabou 11y ago
  You just have to double click the ttf files (or select them all and double click one of them) and it will install. Don't need to move them manually.
ithinkso 11y ago
I hate that 'i' glyph but otherwise looks nice. I'm more interested in editor's colorscheme in example though. Really nice, anyone has some information?
piker 11y ago
I'm trying this out. It looks really sweet thus far. Thanks for your contribution. I think you'd be surprised how much of an affect your work will have on the folks who adopt it.
plicense 11y ago
Thanks, but I will still stick with Monaco.
unfamiliar 11y ago
Why does source code have to be shown in fixed width? I've been using non-fixed width fonts for about a year now and I find it much nicer on the eyes. The only downside I've found is that sometimes things don't line up quite as nicely, which is purely cosmetic.
- dwc 11y ago
  It does not have to be. Go ahead and use nice proportional fonts and never looks back. There are certainly no shortage of them that are high quality and easy on the eyes. But for the rest of us, having a fixed width font is as important as any other consideration. And we're always on the lookout for a fixed width font that's as pleasing and readable as you proportional font people enjoy. Don't be jealous of us getting all the articles and blogs, because those only exist because we're jealous of you and trying to catch up.
  - derefr 11y ago
    On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen a proportional font designed specifically for programming in. Like, with the same "make sure 1/l and 0/O look different" considerations programmers' fonts get, but proportional.
    - tobr 11y ago
      You should check out Input, which is exactly that. I've been using it for a couple of months, can definitely recommend it. The only issue I've run into is that certain features in Sublime Text don't work so well with proportional fonts, such as indent guides. http://input.fontbureau.com http://input.fontbureau.com
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        The preview page is amazing.
    - Stratoscope 11y ago
      I've been using Trebuchet MS for coding, and it does a good job on this: all the confusing pairs are easily distinguished. For example, the lowercase "l" has a little rounded hook at the bottom to it doesn't look like a capital "I". It's not perfect, but I've been enjoying using it. Before that I used Georgia, which is also fairly good in this area. I stopped using Georgia because it rendered poorly with too-thin stems in Windows 8.1 on a MacBook Pro Retina. Looked fine in OSX and on my ThinkPad's 145 DPI display.
s9w 11y ago
Hack and others compared: http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/ http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/
hharnisch 11y ago
I still like Source Code Pro better (yes it's free too) https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro
- jack9 11y ago
  Example: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Source+Code+Pro https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Source+Code+Pro Ew.
izzle49 11y ago
might just be me, but looks identical to Deja Vu Sans mono for me on windows
k__ 11y ago
I'd like to use Fira Code ligatures on Atom, but they're buggy :\ At the moment I'm using Monoid, but it hasn't as much ligatures as Fira Code.
jevgeni 11y ago
I'm reading "if" as "lf"...
FranOntanaya 11y ago
I use Hasklig, even though on a different language. I love having ligatures for common symbols. I should pick up fontforge again and adapt it to PHP https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/ https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/
- hieronymusN 11y ago
  The use of ligatures in Hasklig is very intriguing. Would really like to see more work in this vein. Could see benefits to Clojure (arrows) and even => in JavaScript. EDIT: Looks like FiraCode has ligatures too https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
  - niccaluim 11y ago
    Oh my yes, this is very nice indeed. Probably the first real advancement I've seen in programming fonts in decades.
    - e12e 11y ago
      Hm. I was hoping maybe neovim (being, in some sense - "new" vim) might have fixed this -- apparently not (yet) -- looks like it's still modelled too closely on vim (not that that's a surprise, or all bad -- I suppose it was too much to hope for that this kind of design errors would be (easier to) fix(ed) this early: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1408 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1408 Proper font handling is actually one of the few things that I find troubling with these "old" nix tools. The combination of nice font handling and otherwise being lightweight (and working fine without any borders, which makes sense when paired with xmonad for a window manager) was one of the reasons I moved to Sakura: http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura (Not on my Linux box atm - so unable to test if ligatures actually work -- but either way it would appear vim does a little too much -- so even if the terminal handles ligatures, vim will not. Time to upgrade to ed! ;-) I wonder if kakoune[1] supports ligatures in a capabable terminal? I'm guessing not, but have yet to try. Also, I just discovered that AbiWord actually have a setting to get vi(m) keybindings -- not that I'd suggest moving from vim to abiword for editing code...: http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Keyboard_bindings http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Keyboard_bindings Based on the issue[2] for Emacs support, it looks like the general "easy" approach is monkey-patching from two-symbols to unicode ligatures and back on the fly. Such an approach would probably work with vim too -- it'd probably be just as well to handle that bit via a pre/post processor -- and just type in the combined symbols directly in vim (eg: iab >= ≥ to insert the symbol for "greather-then" rather than >= -- and then just deal with editing that as a single symbol. You'd need to run the source through a transformation to change all occurrences back -- for most langauges -- so I'm not sure if it's really a good idea. But seems simpler if you just want ligatures, and there's a unicode glyph that matches the ligatures you want. Ahem, well -- from the Haskling site: "Some Haskellers have resorted to Unicode symbols (⇒, ← etc.), which are valid in the ghc. However they are one-character-wide and therefore eye-strainingly small. Furthermore, when displayed as substitutes to the underlying multi-character representation, as vim2hs does, the characters go out of alignment." So then again, maybe not. I suppose we just have to wait for the next display server tech to reinvent display PostScript along with a friendly API ... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 [2] See gist linked from issue: https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/issues/10 https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/issues/10
deleted 11y ago
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- tedunangst 11y ago
  The O looks like a zero, but the 0 has a dot, and therefore doesn't look like an oh. That's not enough? I'm happy if every letter has a distinct form; they don't all need to differ from the common form though.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
alexggordon 11y ago
I've been using Anonymous Pro[0] for as long as I've known about it. I think I think Anonymous slightly more than Hack. On a different note, while this might sound like a silly gripe, I really don't like the "r"s in Hack. They seem off. [0] http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro
rwinn 11y ago
Another coding font worth mentioning is Anonymous Pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro
dogas 11y ago
Hack is DejaVu sans mono. Below is a gif I took switching between DejaVu sans mono and Hack. Aside from line height I fail to see the difference. http://gfycat.com/SomberUnitedGermanshepherd http://gfycat.com/SomberUnitedGermanshepherd
- timbre 11y ago
  "i" is different. Don't see anything else though.
  - cokernel 11y ago
    Comma and colon are also quite different.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Top of the lowercase 't'.
  - andreasvc 11y ago
    Hack's "i" is not an improvement IMHO, they made it less distinctive from "l".
    - michaelmior 11y ago
      I feel like the tail on the i is too long.
      - campers 11y ago
        That was the one thing that stood out for me too
- cokernel 11y ago
  For the first obvious difference, watch the 'i' in 'login'.
- jmtulloss 11y ago
  If you look more closely you'll see that many of the glyphs are changed, most subtly. The lowercase "i" is the most significant change I saw.
kozukumi 11y ago
While on the subject of fonts could an expert answer a question for me - on Windows (10 if it matters) should I install the ttf or the otf font? Is there a difference?
- okanesen 11y ago
  This should hopefully answer your question: http://superuser.com/questions/96390/difference-between-otf-open-type-or-ttf-true-type-font-formats/96399#96399 http://superuser.com/questions/96390/difference-between-otf-...
ksrm 11y ago
Fantasque Sans Mono is my font of choice: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
pluma 11y ago
Since everyone's mentioning their favourite code fonts -- any love for Ubuntu Mono? I know it's not trendy to like the OS default as a non-Apple user but I find myself always coming back to it when I see it in comparisons.
- imauld 11y ago
  I love Ubuntu Mono as well. I even installed it on the Windows side of my desktop even though I do pretty limited coding there.
- dvirsky 11y ago
  From what I can gather this font is almost identical to Ubuntu Mono.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    The 1Il are a little more distinguished in Ubuntu. Also, look closer at the stem of n and u. Ubuntu is also weighted heavier I think.
- eugenekolo2 11y ago
  I Ubuntu Mono on all my machines.
- technomancy 11y ago
  The "m" in Ubuntu Mono is just so adorable it makes me smile every time.
- tyrust 11y ago
  In addition to just being a nice monospaced font, I like that its non-monospaced version, Ubuntu, is also available. I can use Mono in my source and non-Mono in my desktop UI and everything looks consistent.
- drakonka 11y ago
  My favorite.
obilgic 11y ago
https://github.com/nathco/office-code-pro https://github.com/nathco/office-code-pro
klausa 11y ago
I'm slightly surprised that almost nobody here uses Menlo or Monaco, even though several screenshots in the thread are clearly made on OS X. I'm curious why that's the case. Do people generally dislike the system-provided fonts or are the alternatives considered "better"?
- ricardobeat 11y ago
  I use Menlo in both the terminal and my editor, and am sure A good portion of of my coworkers use Monaco.
- jonhohle 11y ago
  I'm a huge Monaco fan. Slightly disappointed that Apple chose a Bitstream Sans derivative for its default monospace font. I don't dislike Bitstream/Deja Vu/Panic Sans/Menlo - it just feels derivative at this point and Apple often take opinionated stances on typefaces. Nothing beats the lowercase "a" in Monaco. I feel like it has a bit of whimsy that other fixed with fonts don't have. It's not stuffy or pretentious. None of the bowls are circular or ovular (except for the "o") all of the ASCII range characters are distinct. It looks great in its bitmap or anti-aliased vector versions.
- disposablehero 11y ago
  I've been using Monaco for Powerline for quite a long while now. The main issue is that most of the builtin proportionally-spaced fonts have some glyphs which are difficult to distinguish. Monaco gets the job done but other people prefer slightly different glyph styles or want to make their own fonts, more power to them.
- rmrfrmrf 11y ago
  I love Menlo and use it almost exclusively, but the inline asterisk makes people upset for some reason. I personally prefer an inline asterisk.
  - klausa 11y ago
    Holy shit. You just made me realise why I actually love Menlo. (I'm an iOS dev, so I type and see a shitload of asterisks on a daily basis.) Many alternatives "felt" wrong, but I never quite could put a finger on what's wrong with them. Inline asterisks definitely feel just right at home when writing Obj-C.
kbd 11y ago
I've been using Proggy Tiny for literally over a decade, I wonder if there's any font that can beat it for me. Does anyone know of an easy way to compare two typefaces and see how they look when rendering source code?
- durdn 11y ago
  As mentioned earlier in the thread: http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/ http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/
  - kbd 11y ago
    Thanks, I've seen that before, but it doesn't list Proggy Tiny, and just shows the characters in the font in a line and not how they'd appear in source code. It's hard to discern things like line height, compare the fonts at equivalent sizes, or see how they'd actually look in source code. It also has anti-aliasing enabled on fonts that support it, which I personally hate. Proggy Tiny is designed to be pixel perfect at small sizes. MonteCarlo looked similar to Proggy Tiny, but when I typed MonteCarlo's example[1] into my editor and compared to Proggy Tiny[2] I really disliked it. That shows why you really need to see it with real source code in an editor at the same size. Thanks for the link though, it's a good resource to see some of what's available! [1] http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/java-example.html http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/java-example.html [2] http://imgur.com/no8txTq http://imgur.com/no8txTq Edit: totally didn't notice it has a compare mode, and that you can change sizes and turn anti-aliasing off. This thing is sweet!
Gikoskos 11y ago
I've never thought about fonts in coding environments before; you guys must be very experienced if you're thinking of stuff like that. This is what my editor(Kate) looks like, is this a good font or a bad font? http://i.imgur.com/QtP1csu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QtP1csu.jpg
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  Your font is fine. Use whatever you like. Main thing I look for is fonts that differentiate between things like 0Oo and lI1. I prefer open source fonts too. Just don't use a non-monospaced font.
  - MengerSponge 11y ago
    But it's so much easier to get your mixed tabs and spaces aligned correctly with a non-monospaced font!
  - niccaluim 11y ago
    In my day we wrote Pascal in 9-point Geneva and we liked it! ;)
    - quicksilver03 11y ago
      In THINK Pascal? In all those years I've never found another IDE that was as productive as this gem.
      - niccaluim 11y ago
        Yes! And same--the THINK IDEs spoiled me.
- zanny 11y ago
  You grab a bunch of fonts, try all the monospace ones, find one you like, and go with it. I use Liberation Mono everywhere. You might want to give Oxygen-Mono a shot just for kicks since its the "kde" font, but having used both I still like my Liberation.
oofabz 11y ago
I am partial to Luxi Mono myself: http://frammish.org/luxi.png http://frammish.org/luxi.png
- dvirsky 11y ago
  I really don't like the font personally, but you know, can't argue with taste. I'm curious though - you're using Geany for working with Go? What level of support does it have?
  - oofabz 11y ago
    Geany doesn't support Go out of the box, but you can configure it to have excellent support. In the preferences, you can tell it the "go build" commands, and it will be able to build & run your project in Geany's integrated terminal and attach gdb for debugging. Also in the preferences you can tell it the format of go error messages, which allows it to highlight lines with compile errors.
- espadrine 11y ago
  In that style, I find Latin Modern Mono better, especially its digits.
be5invis 11y ago
Well, Hack and many other fonts like SCP is a bit too wide for Asians, since they may mix source code with 文字 like this. That's why I made Iosevka [1]. [1]: http://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ http://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/
- bitserf 11y ago
  Thank you for this, I really, really like the compactness of it. Not surprised to see Pragmata as an inspiration, I bought that font a few years ago when it was around US$100, and I still love it today, I probably use it 80% of the time :)
jwr 11y ago
Good, but not as good as a) Input Mono Narrow and b) Inconsolata.
snehesht 11y ago
try Droid Sans Mono
- mih 11y ago
  Not much love here for Droid family it appears. Droid Sans Mono has been my go to monospace font for years now on different platforms. Ideal fonts are subjective, but this font is most comfortable to my eye on both shell and editors when antialiasing is turned on. Strangely enough I find Noto Sans which is derived from the same family less pleasing.
forgotusername2 11y ago
i really love ProggyCleanTTSZ can't see myself switching specially for a font called "Hack"
totony 11y ago
If you're looking for a programming font, you might like this old relic: http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/ http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/
xj9 11y ago
Anyone use Hermit[1]? [1]: https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/ https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/
auganov 11y ago
Pragmatapro is my fav http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm (since everyone is posting theirs).
- repairmanJack 11y ago
  Seconded. Bought it ten years ago/ never looked back. And Fabrizio (the author) has been pumping out improved versions to all registered users about annually - just shows up in my inbox.
Aardwolf 11y ago
Looks good, but the font of the webpage itself could use some improvement. http://i.imgur.com/UEkkBAc.png http://i.imgur.com/UEkkBAc.png Why do w, x, v, y look darker than the other letters there? Why are the S, z and g missing part in the center?
meIias 11y ago
For coding I highly recommend M+ 1mn, a lot of thought seems to have gone into the design of this typeface. http://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/ http://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/
distantsounds 11y ago
No Love for ProFont here. I can't get away from using it. http://tobiasjung.name/profont/ http://tobiasjung.name/profont/
wnevets 11y ago
I just the default font for sublime text. I've never found a "source code" font worth switching to,
briandear 11y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Comic Sans! It's my goto font for all of my coding needs.
bitwize 11y ago
No one has yet mentioned the ultimate hacker font -- Glass Tty VT220: http://christfollower.me/misc/glasstty/ http://christfollower.me/misc/glasstty/ Then there's UW ttyp0 for those who still prefer their fonts bit-mapped: http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/ http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/ And UniVGA, an emulation of the VGA font that provides much of Unicode (useful for a little Turbo Pascal nostalgia trip with an appropriate color theme, or the FPC IDE): http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/ http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/
- iso8859-1 11y ago
  ttyp0 is way better than Terminus, which is so popular among Linux/Unix people. But if the world ever goes HiDPI, I guess bit-mapped fonts will die out.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    I tested the 3270 on HiDPI displays (Mac and Linux) and it was glorious. Seriously.
  - otabdeveloper1 11y ago
    > But if the world ever goes HiDPI, I guess bit-mapped fonts will die out. No, it's the other way around. Anti-aliasing is a hack to make low-res displays slightly more palatable. Once the resolution gets good enough, there's no point in anti-aliasing your fonts anymore, and bitmaps start making a lot more sense.
    - iso-8859-1 11y ago
      How is anti-aliasing related? I was thinking about rasters: if you don't have many pixels, you need to use every single one the best possible way, so you manually layout every single pixel. If I have a ton, I can draw any vector glyph and I would not need to micro-manage the pixels. Can you elaborate or give me a link?
      - 11y ago
disposablehero 11y ago
Just a bit of feedback (bias: I'm used to Monaco for Powerline) The lowercase 'a' is much better than Monaco. The tilde and lowercase 't' seem harder to see than Monaco. People see characters differently, so some things which make it harder to see for some are easier for others. Make one want a website which generates a custom font based on each person choosing the most visible variant of each glyph. Hack: http://screencast.com/t/nnGD3Wm1M7Z5 http://screencast.com/t/nnGD3Wm1M7Z5 Monaco: http://screencast.com/t/65hJcI43XT7 http://screencast.com/t/65hJcI43XT7
Plishar 11y ago
I'm not a fan of the Trebuchet- style lowercase 'i' with the unnecessary curved hook on the bottom. Or the design of zero. I'll stick with Consolas.
doodpants 11y ago
When using a text editor or IDE that does not allow the user to adjust the line spacing (aka "leading"), my choice of programming font for the last 1.5 decades has been Lucida Console. It has tighter line spacing than any other monospaced font I've seen, thus displaying more lines of code within a window of a given height. Every time I hear about a new font designed for source code, I try it out, and am consistently disappointed at how far apart the lines are spaced. I haven't tried Hack, but looking at the screen shot it seems no better than other fonts in this regard. Font designers never seem to consider tight line spacing as a potential selling point, and that makes me sad. :-( In fact, wider line spacing is sometimes touted as an advantage, for readability.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  That is a customizable option in Sublime Text, which is my primary editor.
michaelcampbell 11y ago
The 0 reminds me a bit of the the Jacksonesque Eye of Sauron. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, really.
Paul_S 11y ago
There already is a perfect font for coding - terminus. Not that choice is a bad thing.
ramgorur 11y ago
I like luculent, it's quite thin and you can stuff lots of texts in a small terminal, very useful if your laptop is small, and underscore is also thick.
- i336_ 11y ago
  -> http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/ http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/
znpy 11y ago
In my emacs setup, I use Hermit (a font for programmers, by a programmer) https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/ https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/
- otis_inf 11y ago
  For programmer art that looks not bad at all!
tmycnw 11y ago
6-7 years ago I bought the Essential version of the PragmataPro font (http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm). And although in the intervening years I have tried dozens of other fonts, I have always come back to the PragmataPro. It is now available for 19 euros (~$21). I bought the essential version for $70 back then. I personally use it aliased. The font looks a little dense with anti-aliasing on. But I never liked anti-aliasing anyway, especially on low-dpi screens.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
white-flame 11y ago
This font does not work well at all in small font sizes, at least in Emacs. (ttf, linux mint, no font hinting) At 4 & 5 point font sizes, there is a TON of whitespace around each character, destroying the text density and visible flow. Though it might be an Emacs rendering quirk as it never quite appears exactly the same as system fonts otherwise. Liberation Mono is still works the best for me at those font sizes, still being legible and leaving enough pixels varying between similar characters to distinguish them.
ninjakeyboard 11y ago
Probably an uninformed response, but this looks a lot like menlo to me. Edit: People compare to DejaVu sans serif - which is almost identical to menlo as well: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2009/10/the-compleat-menlovera-sans-comparison/ http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2009/10/the-compleat-menlov...
falsedan 11y ago
I've use the same page[0] for the last 4 years to decide on which font to use for coding on new machines. I see Hack has been recently added! [0] http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming-fonts http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming...
ivan_burazin 11y ago
This started quite a conversation, looking at the stats in Codeanywhere it seems at a first glance that Inconsolata is the most used (although true this is the default font). Will do a detailed analysis and report my findings :)
tomelders 11y ago
As with most typefaces, i fail to see how this is better than Comic Sans.
- puranjay 11y ago
  You haven't reached peak typography hipster status if you haven't sent out a resume in comic sans
i336_ 11y ago
Since everyone's mentioning their favourite fonts... Some time ago I discovered the IBM OS/2 VIO (console/terminal/monospace) font converted to PCF for use with X11. A screenshot and an archive can be found here: http://www.karasik.eu.org/fonts/ http://www.karasik.eu.org/fonts/ I haven't used this resource, which has (aparently) the same font data converted to BDF: https://github.com/dk/ibm-vio-os2-fonts https://github.com/dk/ibm-vio-os2-fonts I'm on a spare (unconfigured) PC at the moment since my main systems were taken down for abrupt maintenance, but it's currently the default font I use in my terminals, text editor, etc. It looks a LOT softer than Fixed (the default X11 font)!
dennist 11y ago
I hate it when sites like this change the normal scrolling behaviour. I use the trackpad on my MBP and on sites like this scrolling accelerates too quickly and gestures like going back don't work in chrome.
- juhq 11y ago
  This. Why do people think that changing default behaviour is ok? Hijacking scrolling always bothers me, for now I can't even read the content because of the scrolling being too annoying. Maybe I should write a browser extension to remove scrolling hijacking.
andmarios 11y ago
Nice font. I really appreciate that it supports non-latin alphabets. Even though it seems that these alphabets come from the original font (deja vu maybe?) and hasn't been much worked on, it still is extremely useful! Some critic: The small i seems a bit funny to me. It is like a greek iota (ι) with a dot on top. Also it is a bit tall font. Whilst that makes text/code more readable, on the same time it let you see less lines on your terminal. My main mono font (Liberation Mono), lets me see comfortably 51 lines in a full screen terminal on a 15.6" laptop. Hack font only shows 45 lines (11% less code :p) at an equally acceptable size.
Shengbo 11y ago
I recently switched to Roboto Mono Light and I love it so far. Looks really clean on retina screens.
- 3zzy 11y ago
  Me too. I used Consolas, but I absolutely love Roboto Mono now.
CharlesMerriam2 11y ago
We see another pushing of 'the great programming font' from time to time. But rarely see innovations like special glyphs from multi-character tokens, +=, ++, /*. We see the same, boring, single rendering glyphs for parenthesis and brackets without regard to the depth level of parenthesis. You would think a more savvy font designer could do something eliding color and font rendering to produce a font the would help quickly understand code.
- okbake 11y ago
  Have you see FiraCode? https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode I find the idea interesting and would love to see more in this direction. It especially makes sense for languages with more obscure operators that are mimicking traditionally handwritten mathematical symbols. That being said, I tried using FiraCode for a week and switched back. Some of the conventional common operators have become so ubiquitous and second nature to me that its difficult to adjust (especially the comparison operators). I'm still looking forward to more extended ligature fonts though.
jfb 11y ago
I like the typeface, but I wish Hack had other weights; I find their normal weight far too heavy. I use Source Code Pro Extra Light (in Emacs and the terminal, on OS X) on my low-DPI display and it's pretty good.
rkuska 11y ago
As a python developer I use only fonts which inserts tiny space between two and more following underscores. See in __call__ method http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/assets/img/mockup/python-source-specimen.png http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/assets/img/mockup/python-sourc...
PSeitz 11y ago
Someone can compare it to sourcecode pro?

521 points by erickhill 11y ago

Enjoy using it in my terminal and sublime text editor. I slightly prefer it over Manaco/Menlo ..

blt 11y ago

Now that I have a 4k monitor, I notice how unrefined the shapes of most programming fonts are. Of course this is on purpose and the right choice for typical resolutions, but it would be cool if someone designed a bit more elegant monospace font for 4k displays.

knuxus 11y ago
Try Fira Code, thats the one I use. Compared just now to Hack and still prefer the curves and shapes of a good old Fira font.
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
FWIW, Inconsolata was designed to look good and elegant at large sizes in print, so it should fit the bill quite well.
- fjarlq 11y ago
  I like Inconsolata[1] a lot. I prefer the version of Inconsolata with straight quotes[2]. [1]: http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html [2]: http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/ http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...
jpolitz 11y ago
One suggestion is Triplicate (http://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html http://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html), which looks _awesome_ at high resolutions.
- pimlottc 11y ago
  Oddly enough, that site does not seem to allow deep links, even to a sales page.
  - jpolitz 11y ago
    I contacted the site's author, the link should work now.
err4nt 11y ago
I have really enjoyed the look of 'Source Code Pro', an open-source monospace font designed by Adobe. It pairs well with Source Sans Pro for sans-serif text. Not only do all of my editors use 'Source Code Pro' but I also often use it to display monospaced text on websites because of how clear and legible it is for reading as well as coding. I cant wait to put Hack to the test, but for me the ultimate test will be if it can displace Source Code Pro from my editor!
LeoNatan25 11y ago
Source Code Pro and Consolas are the best ones for me on high DPI displays. SCP is also very good on normal displays.

sagichmal 11y ago

Nice. Reminds me of http://input.fontbureau.com http://input.fontbureau.com, a little bit softer.

gnuvince 11y ago
I just found Input yesterday, and I really like it. Hack doesn't come out well in Emacs (letters are way too spaced), so I'll stick with Input.

ufo 11y ago

I found the glyph for zero really ugly and attention grabbing

coldtea 11y ago
That's the idea, it should draw attention that it's not capital "o". Ugly though, it's not.

teamhappy 11y ago

Comparison with Fira Mono at 12px: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140470 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140470 I'll stick with Fira.

tedunangst 11y ago
Is it just me or is screenshot comparison useless on mobile?
- teamhappy 11y ago
  Fira: https://imgur.com/nbzZsxi https://imgur.com/nbzZsxi Hack: https://imgur.com/X2qLx8H https://imgur.com/X2qLx8H
timdorr 11y ago
Here's the same with Source Code Pro: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140474 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140474 I'm liking the asterisk and kerning in general. It's taller, so it feels a little more cramped between lines. That might be a dealbreaker for some.
- MengerSponge 11y ago
  I think you've made a mistake. The a glyph in your demo doesn't look like the glyph in the Github repository...
perlpimp 11y ago
Fira at low res without antialiasing and without retina display looks right. I'd choose fira.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
The 'f' is really ugly, and the * not being centered is a shame (it's used so much in source code for ⨉, it really should be vertically centered), but the reduced number of serifs is nice. I also like how === has less spacing between the lines, which fits common source code conventions which use = for underlines and horizontal rules.

bberrry 11y ago

I desperately want to find a new code font to love but I always return to Consolas.

johnchristopher 11y ago
Ditto. On linux I fancy terminus though.
- kjak 11y ago
  I really like Terminus. I started using it last year and I'd be hard-pressed to switch to anything else.
  - durdn 11y ago
    Seconded. Terminus is really amazing. But I've been trying Hack for a change after many years of Terminus and I find it rather pleasing.
seunosewa 11y ago
Same situation here, except that it's Courier New that I always return to.
- teamhappy 11y ago
  Have you looked at Courier Prime? I like it a lot. http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ // Looks like they've added Courier Prime Code.
dingaling 11y ago
For a complete change of style it might be worth having a look at fonts designed assisting those with dyslexia. Designed for uniqueness of glyphs and for minimising eye strain. https://gumroad.com/l/OpenDyslexic# https://gumroad.com/l/OpenDyslexic# http://dyslite.com/home/download/dyslite-mono-dyslexic/ http://dyslite.com/home/download/dyslite-mono-dyslexic/ I've used them for several years ( even though I'm not dyslexic ) and now find 'normal' terminal fonts to be extremely harsh on the eye. Probably the best change I've ever made to my programming environment.

Kequc 11y ago

On OSX put the ttf's into your ~/Library/Fonts directory. I've switched, Atom looks subtly different, but I'm surprisingly comfortable with it. Looks good.

mattkrea 11y ago
I'm loving it. It makes a great terminal font as well.
Watabou 11y ago
You just have to double click the ttf files (or select them all and double click one of them) and it will install. Don't need to move them manually.

ithinkso 11y ago

I hate that 'i' glyph but otherwise looks nice. I'm more interested in editor's colorscheme in example though. Really nice, anyone has some information?

piker 11y ago

I'm trying this out. It looks really sweet thus far. Thanks for your contribution. I think you'd be surprised how much of an affect your work will have on the folks who adopt it.

plicense 11y ago

Thanks, but I will still stick with Monaco.

unfamiliar 11y ago

Why does source code have to be shown in fixed width? I've been using non-fixed width fonts for about a year now and I find it much nicer on the eyes. The only downside I've found is that sometimes things don't line up quite as nicely, which is purely cosmetic.

dwc 11y ago
It does not have to be. Go ahead and use nice proportional fonts and never looks back. There are certainly no shortage of them that are high quality and easy on the eyes. But for the rest of us, having a fixed width font is as important as any other consideration. And we're always on the lookout for a fixed width font that's as pleasing and readable as you proportional font people enjoy. Don't be jealous of us getting all the articles and blogs, because those only exist because we're jealous of you and trying to catch up.
- derefr 11y ago
  On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen a proportional font designed specifically for programming in. Like, with the same "make sure 1/l and 0/O look different" considerations programmers' fonts get, but proportional.
  - tobr 11y ago
    You should check out Input, which is exactly that. I've been using it for a couple of months, can definitely recommend it. The only issue I've run into is that certain features in Sublime Text don't work so well with proportional fonts, such as indent guides. http://input.fontbureau.com http://input.fontbureau.com
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      The preview page is amazing.
  - Stratoscope 11y ago
    I've been using Trebuchet MS for coding, and it does a good job on this: all the confusing pairs are easily distinguished. For example, the lowercase "l" has a little rounded hook at the bottom to it doesn't look like a capital "I". It's not perfect, but I've been enjoying using it. Before that I used Georgia, which is also fairly good in this area. I stopped using Georgia because it rendered poorly with too-thin stems in Windows 8.1 on a MacBook Pro Retina. Looked fine in OSX and on my ThinkPad's 145 DPI display.

s9w 11y ago

Hack and others compared: http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/ http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/

hharnisch 11y ago

I still like Source Code Pro better (yes it's free too) https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro

jack9 11y ago
Example: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Source+Code+Pro https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Source+Code+Pro Ew.

izzle49 11y ago

might just be me, but looks identical to Deja Vu Sans mono for me on windows

k__ 11y ago

I'd like to use Fira Code ligatures on Atom, but they're buggy :\ At the moment I'm using Monoid, but it hasn't as much ligatures as Fira Code.

jevgeni 11y ago

I'm reading "if" as "lf"...

FranOntanaya 11y ago

I use Hasklig, even though on a different language. I love having ligatures for common symbols. I should pick up fontforge again and adapt it to PHP https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/ https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/

hieronymusN 11y ago
The use of ligatures in Hasklig is very intriguing. Would really like to see more work in this vein. Could see benefits to Clojure (arrows) and even => in JavaScript. EDIT: Looks like FiraCode has ligatures too https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
- niccaluim 11y ago
  Oh my yes, this is very nice indeed. Probably the first real advancement I've seen in programming fonts in decades.
  - e12e 11y ago
    Hm. I was hoping maybe neovim (being, in some sense - "new" vim) might have fixed this -- apparently not (yet) -- looks like it's still modelled too closely on vim (not that that's a surprise, or all bad -- I suppose it was too much to hope for that this kind of design errors would be (easier to) fix(ed) this early: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1408 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/1408 Proper font handling is actually one of the few things that I find troubling with these "old" nix tools. The combination of nice font handling and otherwise being lightweight (and working fine without any borders, which makes sense when paired with xmonad for a window manager) was one of the reasons I moved to Sakura: http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura (Not on my Linux box atm - so unable to test if ligatures actually work -- but either way it would appear vim does a little too much -- so even if the terminal handles ligatures, vim will not. Time to upgrade to ed! ;-) I wonder if kakoune[1] supports ligatures in a capabable terminal? I'm guessing not, but have yet to try. Also, I just discovered that AbiWord actually have a setting to get vi(m) keybindings -- not that I'd suggest moving from vim to abiword for editing code...: http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Keyboard_bindings http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Keyboard_bindings Based on the issue[2] for Emacs support, it looks like the general "easy" approach is monkey-patching from two-symbols to unicode ligatures and back on the fly. Such an approach would probably work with vim too -- it'd probably be just as well to handle that bit via a pre/post processor -- and just type in the combined symbols directly in vim (eg: iab >= ≥ to insert the symbol for "greather-then" rather than >= -- and then just deal with editing that as a single symbol. You'd need to run the source through a transformation to change all occurrences back -- for most langauges -- so I'm not sure if it's really a good idea. But seems simpler if you just want ligatures, and there's a unicode glyph that matches the ligatures you want. Ahem, well -- from the Haskling site: "Some Haskellers have resorted to Unicode symbols (⇒, ← etc.), which are valid in the ghc. However they are one-character-wide and therefore eye-strainingly small. Furthermore, when displayed as substitutes to the underlying multi-character representation, as vim2hs does, the characters go out of alignment." So then again, maybe not. I suppose we just have to wait for the next display server tech to reinvent display PostScript along with a friendly API ... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 [2] See gist linked from issue: https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/issues/10 https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/issues/10

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tedunangst 11y ago
The O looks like a zero, but the 0 has a dot, and therefore doesn't look like an oh. That's not enough? I'm happy if every letter has a distinct form; they don't all need to differ from the common form though.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

alexggordon 11y ago

I've been using Anonymous Pro[0] for as long as I've known about it. I think I think Anonymous slightly more than Hack. On a different note, while this might sound like a silly gripe, I really don't like the "r"s in Hack. They seem off. [0] http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro

rwinn 11y ago

Another coding font worth mentioning is Anonymous Pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro

dogas 11y ago

Hack is DejaVu sans mono. Below is a gif I took switching between DejaVu sans mono and Hack. Aside from line height I fail to see the difference. http://gfycat.com/SomberUnitedGermanshepherd http://gfycat.com/SomberUnitedGermanshepherd

timbre 11y ago
"i" is different. Don't see anything else though.
- cokernel 11y ago
  Comma and colon are also quite different.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Top of the lowercase 't'.
- andreasvc 11y ago
  Hack's "i" is not an improvement IMHO, they made it less distinctive from "l".
  - michaelmior 11y ago
    I feel like the tail on the i is too long.
    - campers 11y ago
      That was the one thing that stood out for me too
cokernel 11y ago
For the first obvious difference, watch the 'i' in 'login'.
jmtulloss 11y ago
If you look more closely you'll see that many of the glyphs are changed, most subtly. The lowercase "i" is the most significant change I saw.

kozukumi 11y ago

While on the subject of fonts could an expert answer a question for me - on Windows (10 if it matters) should I install the ttf or the otf font? Is there a difference?

okanesen 11y ago
This should hopefully answer your question: http://superuser.com/questions/96390/difference-between-otf-open-type-or-ttf-true-type-font-formats/96399#96399 http://superuser.com/questions/96390/difference-between-otf-...

ksrm 11y ago

Fantasque Sans Mono is my font of choice: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

pluma 11y ago

Since everyone's mentioning their favourite code fonts -- any love for Ubuntu Mono? I know it's not trendy to like the OS default as a non-Apple user but I find myself always coming back to it when I see it in comparisons.

imauld 11y ago
I love Ubuntu Mono as well. I even installed it on the Windows side of my desktop even though I do pretty limited coding there.
dvirsky 11y ago
From what I can gather this font is almost identical to Ubuntu Mono.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  The 1Il are a little more distinguished in Ubuntu. Also, look closer at the stem of n and u. Ubuntu is also weighted heavier I think.
eugenekolo2 11y ago
I Ubuntu Mono on all my machines.
technomancy 11y ago
The "m" in Ubuntu Mono is just so adorable it makes me smile every time.
tyrust 11y ago
In addition to just being a nice monospaced font, I like that its non-monospaced version, Ubuntu, is also available. I can use Mono in my source and non-Mono in my desktop UI and everything looks consistent.
drakonka 11y ago
My favorite.

obilgic 11y ago

https://github.com/nathco/office-code-pro https://github.com/nathco/office-code-pro

klausa 11y ago

I'm slightly surprised that almost nobody here uses Menlo or Monaco, even though several screenshots in the thread are clearly made on OS X. I'm curious why that's the case. Do people generally dislike the system-provided fonts or are the alternatives considered "better"?

ricardobeat 11y ago
I use Menlo in both the terminal and my editor, and am sure A good portion of of my coworkers use Monaco.
jonhohle 11y ago
I'm a huge Monaco fan. Slightly disappointed that Apple chose a Bitstream Sans derivative for its default monospace font. I don't dislike Bitstream/Deja Vu/Panic Sans/Menlo - it just feels derivative at this point and Apple often take opinionated stances on typefaces. Nothing beats the lowercase "a" in Monaco. I feel like it has a bit of whimsy that other fixed with fonts don't have. It's not stuffy or pretentious. None of the bowls are circular or ovular (except for the "o") all of the ASCII range characters are distinct. It looks great in its bitmap or anti-aliased vector versions.
disposablehero 11y ago
I've been using Monaco for Powerline for quite a long while now. The main issue is that most of the builtin proportionally-spaced fonts have some glyphs which are difficult to distinguish. Monaco gets the job done but other people prefer slightly different glyph styles or want to make their own fonts, more power to them.
rmrfrmrf 11y ago
I love Menlo and use it almost exclusively, but the inline asterisk makes people upset for some reason. I personally prefer an inline asterisk.
- klausa 11y ago
  Holy shit. You just made me realise why I actually love Menlo. (I'm an iOS dev, so I type and see a shitload of asterisks on a daily basis.) Many alternatives "felt" wrong, but I never quite could put a finger on what's wrong with them. Inline asterisks definitely feel just right at home when writing Obj-C.

kbd 11y ago

I've been using Proggy Tiny for literally over a decade, I wonder if there's any font that can beat it for me. Does anyone know of an easy way to compare two typefaces and see how they look when rendering source code?

durdn 11y ago
As mentioned earlier in the thread: http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/ http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/
- kbd 11y ago
  Thanks, I've seen that before, but it doesn't list Proggy Tiny, and just shows the characters in the font in a line and not how they'd appear in source code. It's hard to discern things like line height, compare the fonts at equivalent sizes, or see how they'd actually look in source code. It also has anti-aliasing enabled on fonts that support it, which I personally hate. Proggy Tiny is designed to be pixel perfect at small sizes. MonteCarlo looked similar to Proggy Tiny, but when I typed MonteCarlo's example[1] into my editor and compared to Proggy Tiny[2] I really disliked it. That shows why you really need to see it with real source code in an editor at the same size. Thanks for the link though, it's a good resource to see some of what's available! [1] http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/java-example.html http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/java-example.html [2] http://imgur.com/no8txTq http://imgur.com/no8txTq Edit: totally didn't notice it has a compare mode, and that you can change sizes and turn anti-aliasing off. This thing is sweet!

Gikoskos 11y ago

I've never thought about fonts in coding environments before; you guys must be very experienced if you're thinking of stuff like that. This is what my editor(Kate) looks like, is this a good font or a bad font? http://i.imgur.com/QtP1csu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QtP1csu.jpg

zxcvcxz 11y ago
Your font is fine. Use whatever you like. Main thing I look for is fonts that differentiate between things like 0Oo and lI1. I prefer open source fonts too. Just don't use a non-monospaced font.
- MengerSponge 11y ago
  But it's so much easier to get your mixed tabs and spaces aligned correctly with a non-monospaced font!
- niccaluim 11y ago
  In my day we wrote Pascal in 9-point Geneva and we liked it! ;)
  - quicksilver03 11y ago
    In THINK Pascal? In all those years I've never found another IDE that was as productive as this gem.
    - niccaluim 11y ago
      Yes! And same--the THINK IDEs spoiled me.
zanny 11y ago
You grab a bunch of fonts, try all the monospace ones, find one you like, and go with it. I use Liberation Mono everywhere. You might want to give Oxygen-Mono a shot just for kicks since its the "kde" font, but having used both I still like my Liberation.

oofabz 11y ago

I am partial to Luxi Mono myself: http://frammish.org/luxi.png http://frammish.org/luxi.png

dvirsky 11y ago
I really don't like the font personally, but you know, can't argue with taste. I'm curious though - you're using Geany for working with Go? What level of support does it have?
- oofabz 11y ago
  Geany doesn't support Go out of the box, but you can configure it to have excellent support. In the preferences, you can tell it the "go build" commands, and it will be able to build & run your project in Geany's integrated terminal and attach gdb for debugging. Also in the preferences you can tell it the format of go error messages, which allows it to highlight lines with compile errors.
espadrine 11y ago
In that style, I find Latin Modern Mono better, especially its digits.

be5invis 11y ago

Well, Hack and many other fonts like SCP is a bit too wide for Asians, since they may mix source code with 文字 like this. That's why I made Iosevka [1]. [1]: http://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ http://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/

bitserf 11y ago
Thank you for this, I really, really like the compactness of it. Not surprised to see Pragmata as an inspiration, I bought that font a few years ago when it was around US$100, and I still love it today, I probably use it 80% of the time :)

jwr 11y ago

Good, but not as good as a) Input Mono Narrow and b) Inconsolata.

snehesht 11y ago

try Droid Sans Mono

mih 11y ago
Not much love here for Droid family it appears. Droid Sans Mono has been my go to monospace font for years now on different platforms. Ideal fonts are subjective, but this font is most comfortable to my eye on both shell and editors when antialiasing is turned on. Strangely enough I find Noto Sans which is derived from the same family less pleasing.

forgotusername2 11y ago

i really love ProggyCleanTTSZ can't see myself switching specially for a font called "Hack"

totony 11y ago

If you're looking for a programming font, you might like this old relic: http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/ http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/

xj9 11y ago

Anyone use Hermit[1]? [1]: https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/ https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/

auganov 11y ago

Pragmatapro is my fav http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm (since everyone is posting theirs).

repairmanJack 11y ago
Seconded. Bought it ten years ago/ never looked back. And Fabrizio (the author) has been pumping out improved versions to all registered users about annually - just shows up in my inbox.

Aardwolf 11y ago

Looks good, but the font of the webpage itself could use some improvement. http://i.imgur.com/UEkkBAc.png http://i.imgur.com/UEkkBAc.png Why do w, x, v, y look darker than the other letters there? Why are the S, z and g missing part in the center?

meIias 11y ago

For coding I highly recommend M+ 1mn, a lot of thought seems to have gone into the design of this typeface. http://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/ http://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/

distantsounds 11y ago

No Love for ProFont here. I can't get away from using it. http://tobiasjung.name/profont/ http://tobiasjung.name/profont/

wnevets 11y ago

I just the default font for sublime text. I've never found a "source code" font worth switching to,

briandear 11y ago

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Comic Sans! It's my goto font for all of my coding needs.

bitwize 11y ago

No one has yet mentioned the ultimate hacker font -- Glass Tty VT220: http://christfollower.me/misc/glasstty/ http://christfollower.me/misc/glasstty/ Then there's UW ttyp0 for those who still prefer their fonts bit-mapped: http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/ http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/ And UniVGA, an emulation of the VGA font that provides much of Unicode (useful for a little Turbo Pascal nostalgia trip with an appropriate color theme, or the FPC IDE): http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/ http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/

iso8859-1 11y ago
ttyp0 is way better than Terminus, which is so popular among Linux/Unix people. But if the world ever goes HiDPI, I guess bit-mapped fonts will die out.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  I tested the 3270 on HiDPI displays (Mac and Linux) and it was glorious. Seriously.
- otabdeveloper1 11y ago
  > But if the world ever goes HiDPI, I guess bit-mapped fonts will die out. No, it's the other way around. Anti-aliasing is a hack to make low-res displays slightly more palatable. Once the resolution gets good enough, there's no point in anti-aliasing your fonts anymore, and bitmaps start making a lot more sense.
  - iso-8859-1 11y ago
    How is anti-aliasing related? I was thinking about rasters: if you don't have many pixels, you need to use every single one the best possible way, so you manually layout every single pixel. If I have a ton, I can draw any vector glyph and I would not need to micro-manage the pixels. Can you elaborate or give me a link?
    - 11y ago

disposablehero 11y ago

Just a bit of feedback (bias: I'm used to Monaco for Powerline) The lowercase 'a' is much better than Monaco. The tilde and lowercase 't' seem harder to see than Monaco. People see characters differently, so some things which make it harder to see for some are easier for others. Make one want a website which generates a custom font based on each person choosing the most visible variant of each glyph. Hack: http://screencast.com/t/nnGD3Wm1M7Z5 http://screencast.com/t/nnGD3Wm1M7Z5 Monaco: http://screencast.com/t/65hJcI43XT7 http://screencast.com/t/65hJcI43XT7

Plishar 11y ago

I'm not a fan of the Trebuchet- style lowercase 'i' with the unnecessary curved hook on the bottom. Or the design of zero. I'll stick with Consolas.

doodpants 11y ago

When using a text editor or IDE that does not allow the user to adjust the line spacing (aka "leading"), my choice of programming font for the last 1.5 decades has been Lucida Console. It has tighter line spacing than any other monospaced font I've seen, thus displaying more lines of code within a window of a given height. Every time I hear about a new font designed for source code, I try it out, and am consistently disappointed at how far apart the lines are spaced. I haven't tried Hack, but looking at the screen shot it seems no better than other fonts in this regard. Font designers never seem to consider tight line spacing as a potential selling point, and that makes me sad. :-( In fact, wider line spacing is sometimes touted as an advantage, for readability.

LesZedCB 11y ago
That is a customizable option in Sublime Text, which is my primary editor.

michaelcampbell 11y ago

The 0 reminds me a bit of the the Jacksonesque Eye of Sauron. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, really.

Paul_S 11y ago

There already is a perfect font for coding - terminus. Not that choice is a bad thing.

ramgorur 11y ago

I like luculent, it's quite thin and you can stuff lots of texts in a small terminal, very useful if your laptop is small, and underscore is also thick.

i336_ 11y ago
-> http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/ http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/

znpy 11y ago

In my emacs setup, I use Hermit (a font for programmers, by a programmer) https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/ https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/

otis_inf 11y ago
For programmer art that looks not bad at all!

tmycnw 11y ago

6-7 years ago I bought the Essential version of the PragmataPro font (http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm). And although in the intervening years I have tried dozens of other fonts, I have always come back to the PragmataPro. It is now available for 19 euros (~$21). I bought the essential version for $70 back then. I personally use it aliased. The font looks a little dense with anti-aliasing on. But I never liked anti-aliasing anyway, especially on low-dpi screens.

deleted 11y ago

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white-flame 11y ago

This font does not work well at all in small font sizes, at least in Emacs. (ttf, linux mint, no font hinting) At 4 & 5 point font sizes, there is a TON of whitespace around each character, destroying the text density and visible flow. Though it might be an Emacs rendering quirk as it never quite appears exactly the same as system fonts otherwise. Liberation Mono is still works the best for me at those font sizes, still being legible and leaving enough pixels varying between similar characters to distinguish them.

ninjakeyboard 11y ago

Probably an uninformed response, but this looks a lot like menlo to me. Edit: People compare to DejaVu sans serif - which is almost identical to menlo as well: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2009/10/the-compleat-menlovera-sans-comparison/ http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2009/10/the-compleat-menlov...

falsedan 11y ago

I've use the same page[0] for the last 4 years to decide on which font to use for coding on new machines. I see Hack has been recently added! [0] http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming-fonts http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming...

ivan_burazin 11y ago

This started quite a conversation, looking at the stats in Codeanywhere it seems at a first glance that Inconsolata is the most used (although true this is the default font). Will do a detailed analysis and report my findings :)

tomelders 11y ago

As with most typefaces, i fail to see how this is better than Comic Sans.

puranjay 11y ago
You haven't reached peak typography hipster status if you haven't sent out a resume in comic sans

i336_ 11y ago

Since everyone's mentioning their favourite fonts... Some time ago I discovered the IBM OS/2 VIO (console/terminal/monospace) font converted to PCF for use with X11. A screenshot and an archive can be found here: http://www.karasik.eu.org/fonts/ http://www.karasik.eu.org/fonts/ I haven't used this resource, which has (aparently) the same font data converted to BDF: https://github.com/dk/ibm-vio-os2-fonts https://github.com/dk/ibm-vio-os2-fonts I'm on a spare (unconfigured) PC at the moment since my main systems were taken down for abrupt maintenance, but it's currently the default font I use in my terminals, text editor, etc. It looks a LOT softer than Fixed (the default X11 font)!

dennist 11y ago

I hate it when sites like this change the normal scrolling behaviour. I use the trackpad on my MBP and on sites like this scrolling accelerates too quickly and gestures like going back don't work in chrome.

juhq 11y ago
This. Why do people think that changing default behaviour is ok? Hijacking scrolling always bothers me, for now I can't even read the content because of the scrolling being too annoying. Maybe I should write a browser extension to remove scrolling hijacking.

andmarios 11y ago

Nice font. I really appreciate that it supports non-latin alphabets. Even though it seems that these alphabets come from the original font (deja vu maybe?) and hasn't been much worked on, it still is extremely useful! Some critic: The small i seems a bit funny to me. It is like a greek iota (ι) with a dot on top. Also it is a bit tall font. Whilst that makes text/code more readable, on the same time it let you see less lines on your terminal. My main mono font (Liberation Mono), lets me see comfortably 51 lines in a full screen terminal on a 15.6" laptop. Hack font only shows 45 lines (11% less code :p) at an equally acceptable size.

Shengbo 11y ago

I recently switched to Roboto Mono Light and I love it so far. Looks really clean on retina screens.

3zzy 11y ago
Me too. I used Consolas, but I absolutely love Roboto Mono now.

CharlesMerriam2 11y ago

We see another pushing of 'the great programming font' from time to time. But rarely see innovations like special glyphs from multi-character tokens, +=, ++, /*. We see the same, boring, single rendering glyphs for parenthesis and brackets without regard to the depth level of parenthesis. You would think a more savvy font designer could do something eliding color and font rendering to produce a font the would help quickly understand code.

okbake 11y ago
Have you see FiraCode? https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode I find the idea interesting and would love to see more in this direction. It especially makes sense for languages with more obscure operators that are mimicking traditionally handwritten mathematical symbols. That being said, I tried using FiraCode for a week and switched back. Some of the conventional common operators have become so ubiquitous and second nature to me that its difficult to adjust (especially the comparison operators). I'm still looking forward to more extended ligature fonts though.

jfb 11y ago

I like the typeface, but I wish Hack had other weights; I find their normal weight far too heavy. I use Source Code Pro Extra Light (in Emacs and the terminal, on OS X) on my low-DPI display and it's pretty good.

rkuska 11y ago

As a python developer I use only fonts which inserts tiny space between two and more following underscores. See in __call__ method http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/assets/img/mockup/python-source-specimen.png http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/assets/img/mockup/python-sourc...

PSeitz 11y ago

Someone can compare it to sourcecode pro?