3 ms·

I switched to verdana a couple of years ago and am very happy with that. Mono space fonts are hard to read, especially when skimming. So verdana just makes the

I switched to verdana a couple of years ago and am very happy with that. Mono space fonts are hard to read, especially when skimming. So verdana just makes the whole experience of looking at my code more enjoyable and natural.

aquilaFiera 11y ago
My first reaction to this was to balk and dismiss it, but nonetheless I went to Sublime and tried it. I have to say, certain aspects of it were fairly nice; it was very readable. That said, I could never switch. Some of my team's code conventions depend on monospaced fonts, for good or for worse.
Stratoscope 11y ago
Yeah, I closed the tab as soon as I saw this: Programming Fonts The most complete resource for monospace fonts on the web. (Ironically, that title and sentence are in a proportional font on the page!) I'm sad that so many developers think it's not code if it's not monospaced. Of course, everyone has their own taste in fonts, and I have no beef with anyone who prefers some monospaced font or another. Fonts are a very personal choice. On the flip side, though, there are too many coding standards that essentially prohibit developers from using proportional fonts. The biggest problems are two-space indents and column alignment (that is, alignment to specific columns after the initial indent, to match up text on previous lines). In a proportional font, a two-space indent is like nothing. And column alignment doesn't work when you don't have columns! I love the beauty and readability of proportional fonts, and I won't be going back to monospaced fonts. But I don't try to tell anyone else what to do: I write code in a way that makes it equally readable in monospaced or proportional fonts. That way everyone can view the code in the font they like. I've written at some length about the problems with column alignment, so rather than repeat it, here are a couple of previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469713 My current favorite programming font is Trebuchet MS. Yes, really. It looks great on high-DPI displays on both Mac and Windows (in the somewhat large font sizes I prefer), and it makes all the confusing groups like O0 and 1l| easily distinguishable. About the only thing I don't like is that it has a really bad ~ glyph. Someday I must patch that.

aquilaFiera 11y ago

My first reaction to this was to balk and dismiss it, but nonetheless I went to Sublime and tried it. I have to say, certain aspects of it were fairly nice; it was very readable. That said, I could never switch. Some of my team's code conventions depend on monospaced fonts, for good or for worse.

Stratoscope 11y ago

Yeah, I closed the tab as soon as I saw this: Programming Fonts The most complete resource for monospace fonts on the web. (Ironically, that title and sentence are in a proportional font on the page!) I'm sad that so many developers think it's not code if it's not monospaced. Of course, everyone has their own taste in fonts, and I have no beef with anyone who prefers some monospaced font or another. Fonts are a very personal choice. On the flip side, though, there are too many coding standards that essentially prohibit developers from using proportional fonts. The biggest problems are two-space indents and column alignment (that is, alignment to specific columns after the initial indent, to match up text on previous lines). In a proportional font, a two-space indent is like nothing. And column alignment doesn't work when you don't have columns! I love the beauty and readability of proportional fonts, and I won't be going back to monospaced fonts. But I don't try to tell anyone else what to do: I write code in a way that makes it equally readable in monospaced or proportional fonts. That way everyone can view the code in the font they like. I've written at some length about the problems with column alignment, so rather than repeat it, here are a couple of previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469713 My current favorite programming font is Trebuchet MS. Yes, really. It looks great on high-DPI displays on both Mac and Windows (in the somewhat large font sizes I prefer), and it makes all the confusing groups like O0 and 1l| easily distinguishable. About the only thing I don't like is that it has a really bad ~ glyph. Someday I must patch that.