19 ms·

Collection of the best fonts for programming

212 points by hbbio 14y ago

n1c 14y ago
As a lover of Inconsolata I never felt the 1/l was all that similar (re: Inconsolata-g).
- StuieK 14y ago
  It wasn't a huge deal for me, but I could tell that Inconsolata-g had enough of an improvement to warrant the change.
- hbbio 14y ago
  And even strongly statically typed languages won't catch the typo if l is of type int...
- itafroma 14y ago
  The 1/l distinction isn't that bad, but the curved quotation marks and apostrophe were enough to warrant a variant, Inconsolata-dz[1]. Looks like Inconsolata-g is actually built upon the -dz variant because it includes the straight quotation marks and apostrophe. [1]: http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/ http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...
- jackalope 14y ago
  They're not. That comparison was taken from the Inconsolata-g page and is either outdated or inaccurate. Visit the Inconsolata page to see the actual font (which hasn't changed since 2009, I believe): http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html
oofabz 14y ago
I like serifs so I use Luxi Mono. It used to be the RedHat console font and it was inspired by the Sun console font. On Debian it's in the ttf-xfree86-nonfree package.
- mbq 14y ago
  +1 For Luxi Mono; technically it is terrible for programming (0&O and 1&l pairs look almost the same), but I'm somehow addicted to it. So I really hope one day someone will make open source "Luxi Mono-g" clone...
walshemj 14y ago
Why do none of them have slashed zeros and german style 7's and Z with a slash which are 3 things I want in a font designed for programming.
- fredleblanc 14y ago
  I've been using Glyphs on a Mac to create web-icon fonts for the site I make, but it also seems to be able to edit fonts (most of the time). I don't really know a ton about font-making, but it seems that with most of the fonts you'd edit, the kerning and all that is already defined. If it's a matter of adding a couple slashes to 7's/Z's or to 0's, that should be reasonably straight-forward to do. In Glyphs, it would be a matter of adding a new shape for the slash wherever you want it. Then File -> Export and you're on your way. (And obviously you might run into license violations if you're changing fonts you're not allowed to. This post isn't meant to address the legal side of it, just a guy at his desk fixing fonts for his own use.) (Edit: typo.)
- igravious 14y ago
  What's so important with having slashes on 7s and Zs?
  - kd0amg 14y ago
    I do it in handwriting to make them easier to distinguish from 1 and 2, though in typed text, they tend to look different enough for me.
  - walshemj 14y ago
    Its some what old school it's to stop confusing similar symbols O and 0 for example - It may be more common in the more technical branches of programming and in science and tech fields.
- notatoad 14y ago
  You want both the 7s and Zs slashed? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
  - 14y ago
wahnfrieden 14y ago
Menlo
edwintorok 14y ago
My favourite is Linux Libertine Monospaced, available since v5.3.0: http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=2&L=1 http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=2&L=1 You can try it out if you select Monospaced from the dropdown here: http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=86&L=1 http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=86&L=1 Other than that from that list of fonts, Source Code Pro looks quite good too.
hmottestad 14y ago
My favorite is Verdana. Yes. A proportional font for programming. In the beginning I hated tabs and white space, until I just got used to it. Now it's much easier to read my own code. Words jump out of the text because spaces are spaces and "i" doesn't make me doubt for a split second where the word starts and ends.
- alcuadrado 14y ago
  Interesting, but how do you know if you passed the column 80? how do you work when the coding standards mix tabs and spaces (like tab for indenting, spaces for multi-line aligning)?
  - hmottestad 14y ago
    First off I'm a student. Though the last summer job I had people didn't really care that much. Tabs/spaces doesn't really matter much. 80 char width also never been a problem. If it makes sense to have it on a 150 char line, then so be it. If it makes sense to split it up, then do that. The only time I ran into length problems was when I was asked to print my code on A4 paper for an exam.
    - alcuadrado 14y ago
      80 coloumns avoid that (and other) problems. mixing tabs and spaces is strange and IMO should be avoided, but it sometimes happen :( all-spaces FTW
  - VLM 14y ago
    I don't use a proportional font like the OP but graphics art stuff like that is best handled by computer. For example if you do sysadmin scripts in perl and edit with vim and have perltidy installed, its more or less just (esc) :%! perltidy (enter) and it looks beautiful. Gave up on 80 columns a couple years ago. Haven't looked back much.
  - Stratoscope 14y ago
    Those are coding standards designed for monospaced fonts. They work poorly with proportional fonts, but there is a simple solution: abandon those standards. With regard to indenting vs. column alignment, don't do column alignment. Code is an outline. It's not a spreadsheet. Column alignment is not beneficial in most cases, and it wreaks havoc with source control diffs. Is it really better to code like this: double someFunctionName( int index, // counts things SomeType secondParamWithStuff, // fancy object with stuff SomeLongerNamedType third ) // whatever instead of this: double someFunctionName( int index, // counts things SomeType secondParamWithStuff, // fancy object with stuff SomeLongerNamedType third // whatever ) Now sure, the second version may look a bit sloppy if you're used to the first, but it has several real advantages: * Much less horizontal eye movement * No eye tracking across wide swaths of whitespace * Changing one name doesn't require reformatting the whole thing * Since you don't have to reformat, it doesn't generate unrelated diffs * It works equally well in proportional or monospaced fonts Oddly enough, many years ago I switched to the second style, not because I was using a proportional font at the time, but because I was really tired of reformatting multiple lines of code just because I'd refactored one variable or type name. And then some time later I tried a proportional font. My code looked fine in the proportional font, and it was still just as readable in a monospaced font. WRT 80 columns or whatever your limit is, I just don't worry about that. I generally keep my lines quite a bit shorter than that, but if a particular piece of code is more readable with a longer line, I don't sweat it.
rhengles 14y ago
It's a shame Lucida Console is at last position, I like it a lot.
- eterm 14y ago
  Really this site should have randomised the order in which the font samples appear. Right now, votes are directly influenced by page order, which I suppose is indicative that people don't feel strongly about their fonts.
  - ben336 14y ago
    uh, the correlation goes the other way. They're sorted by page order. The popular ones get voted up.
  - T-R 14y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely be iterating on how we rank and present viewpoints to try to reduce bias. We don't want to remove indicators of popularity entirely, though, since that would reduce the utility of the site for readers who are still trying to decide. We do intend, though, to at least provide enough information for users to judge where there may be bias for themselves, and we'll try to eliminate it where we can.
- vangale 14y ago
  I wanted to add a vote for Lucida Console, but stopped when it was asking me to login. Oh well! I like the letter shapes in some other fonts better, but Lucida Console is the only one with proper horizontal width IMHO, although it could be I've just been using it too long.
danjessen 14y ago
Currently use Pragmata Pro ... It's different, and thats proberbly why I'm trying it out for a while. I use it with Sublime Text 2 and the scheme called Big Duo http://cl.ly/image/3M413B322I1O http://cl.ly/image/3M413B322I1O
b3b0p 14y ago
On Windows I have been using Envy Code R http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-coding-font-released http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod... or Source Code Pro https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro On Mac, I use Source Code Pro or Menlo.
- PavlovsCat 14y ago
  I'll second Envy Code R; I use it in bold for better readability at small size.
dschuler 14y ago
The instructions for the Consolas font on Mac OS include downloading an Office update for Mac and extracting the font. I just realized that I already have the font installed, since I also have a copy of Office installed :)
shakesbeard 14y ago
Recently switched from Consolas to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Has been a good experience so far. http://i.imgur.com/qNlpYvn.png http://i.imgur.com/qNlpYvn.png http://www.dafont.com/bitstream-vera-mono.font http://www.dafont.com/bitstream-vera-mono.font
- fjordan 14y ago
  +1 for Bitstream Vera Sans Mono!
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- georgebashi 14y ago
  There's a fork of Bitstream Vera called DejaVu, which adds support for a huge range of characters: http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page
  - lobster_johnson 14y ago
    +1. That has been my perfect mono font for the last 1-2 years.
osener 14y ago
My favorite fixed-width font is Akkurat Mono. It is by far the best font I've ever used but unfortunately it is quite pricey. Here's how it looks on my system: http://ozansener.com/images/github-browse-file-1.png http://ozansener.com/images/github-browse-file-1.png Homepage: http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat+Mono/ http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkur...
- methehack 14y ago
  Wow, purty screenshot. What's the emacs theme you're using?
  - osener 14y ago
    Tomorrow Night (https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-tomorrow/ https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-tomorrow/)
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Looks almost indistinguishable from DejaVu Sans Mono [1]. Screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/MYB1i5N.png http://i.imgur.com/MYB1i5N.png [1] http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page
  - codex 14y ago
    In my experience it's nicer than DSM on the Mac.
  - lbotos 14y ago
    What Theme is this?
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      My tweaked version of Monokai: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/Monokai%202.tmTheme https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/Monokai%2....
StuieK 14y ago
Site is getting hugged to death by you guys, working on getting it back up. Sorry!
alcuadrado 14y ago
11pt in the demos? Real programmers use 10pt!
ryanhorn 14y ago
Awesome, I've been looking for something like this. Would be even more awesome if the fonts were embedded with a syntax highlighted editor ;)
jimmahoney 14y ago
Anonymous Pro
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
platz 14y ago
When did Monaco fall out of favor? What don't people like about it? I kind of like it's angularity.
- peterhil 14y ago
  These newfangled Mac OS X users have not used it enough to appreciate it’s pixel-perfected beauty. I’ve been using it as my monospaced font of choice since 1996 when I started to use Macs.
- YooLi 14y ago
  When Menlo replaced it in 10.6?
- maxjacobson 14y ago
  that's what i like to use!
brianpgordon 14y ago
These have some poor screenshots. Compare their Terminus screenshot with mine: http://i.imgur.com/4NhZ3h2.png http://i.imgur.com/4NhZ3h2.png http://i.imgur.com/yaCGIWG.png http://i.imgur.com/yaCGIWG.png
- qu4z-2 14y ago
  Agreed. As someone who uses Terminus I opened the link and said "What?! That's not what Terminus looks like!"
- anonymous 14y ago
  Terminus starts looking slightly bad in bold and slanted variants and their editor looks like uses it bolded for some reason. Personally, I love Terminus and use it for my terminal and text editor with GNU Unifont as fallback for Asian scripts.
adregan 14y ago
It's not free, but iA's writer got me hooked on Nitti: http://www.boldmonday.com/en/nitti http://www.boldmonday.com/en/nitti I love working in that typeface and have it set to default in Sublime Text and Terminal.
jongold 14y ago
Offbeat suggestion (and definitely not free or readily available) - LineTo Akkurat Mono. I've always been a little bit obsessed with monospace type & this is definitely my favourite. I use it in Sublime, Vim & iTerm 2 - hate using Macs that don't have it installed. http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat+Mono/ http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkur...
bliker 14y ago
I think it is worth mentioning that font-smoothing can be a great improvement on windows.
antihero 14y ago
Can't do without Tamzen. An efficient use of pixels, and big enough for me to read. If you have even a mildly decent display (1920x1080 at 15.6"), pixel fonts are beautiful and readable.
codex 14y ago
No Pragmata or Akkurat Mono? Amateurs.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Source Code Pro looks way, way better on my machine. I hate what Macs do to fonts. http://i.imgur.com/DRywIsw.png http://i.imgur.com/DRywIsw.png
cpeterso 14y ago
If you'd like to see tiny fonts taken to the extreme, check out "The Bee’s Knees", a font with x-height of 3 pixels but surprisingly legible because it uses subpixel rendering: http://www.sitepoint.com/two-teeny-tiny-fonts/ http://www.sitepoint.com/two-teeny-tiny-fonts/
q_revert 14y ago
moved around a fair bit between DejaVu Sans Mono/Inconsolata/Consolas etc before eventually settling on Ubuntu Mono, which really holds up extremely well at smaller sizes (7/8 pt)
chj 14y ago
I used Inconsolata and thought I would never switch again. Now I am finding myself using Ubuntu Mono. It's not that Inconsolata is bad or something, I guess you will get bored anyhow after one or two years.
alexvr 14y ago
Consolas & Monaco <3
hfz 14y ago
So I browsed around for a free alternative of Nitti, most popularly known as iA Writer's font. Someone recommended an alternative: Cousine. http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine It's my new favorite now.
herge 14y ago
Nobody has mentioned mensch! (http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html) Mostly like Menlo except with really big angled brackets and a more conventional l.
- Splendor 14y ago
  Those giant angle brackets make lambdas look too weird for me.
the1 14y ago
i thought better fonts make me a better programmer. i was wrong.
rbanffy 14y ago
I still prefer the 3278 feel of https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font (which is why I did it). Love the retro touch it gives my terminal. Now, if only Gnome Terminal supported phosphor persistence...
- micampe 14y ago
  Not Gnome Terminal, but http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/02/xscreensaver-415/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/02/xscreensaver-415/
- qznc 14y ago
  He lp, the kerning in your eva lua t ion screenshot looks terrible. I prefer other Op t ions. ;)
  - leephillips 14y ago
    It's a fixed-width font. It doesn't have kerning.
rshm 14y ago
no mention of liberation mono here. I find it like verdana of monospaced fonts. http://i.imgur.com/ejCs0nG.png http://i.imgur.com/ejCs0nG.png
yareally 14y ago
I'm surprised Liberation Mono[1][2] (similar to the Deja Vu font) is not on the list or the bitmap font, Dina[3]. I end up using Liberation Mono much more nowadays (which is similar to Dina), since bitmap fonts don't have support in a lot of development tools and Dina has no real UTF-8 support. However, Dina was my first real "programming font" I used and still love it where I can use it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts [2] https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ [3] http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/ http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/
- StuieK 14y ago
  Hey man, feel free to add it! (the entire site is collaboratively written)
  - yareally 14y ago
    Will do :) I just found it surprising no one else had added them already.
- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  How is it better than Menlo, also based on Deja Vu?
  - yareally 14y ago
    It's hard for me to give you an exact comparison (because I'm not an OSX user and have never used Menlo), but I can give you an idea based on a comparison to Deja Vu (on both Linux and Windows 7). Some of my reasons are preference (what looks better) and some are factual (like spacing). Liberation Mono is a more vertically compact font, but I consider it just as readable as Deja Vu. I can fit around 7 more lines on my 1920x1200 monitor with 13pt Liberation versus 12pt Deja Vu. Deja Vu just takes up way more space than it needs to and (my opinion) does not make it anymore readable than Liberation or Dina. I generally dislike anti-aliasing/smoothing on fonts when writing code in certain editors/ides (looking at you Intellij Idea). I don't mind it elsewhere, but Java just sucks at rendering fonts with its generic anti-aliasing scheme. Since I dislike it in Intellij and I use their IDE quite a bit for Android/Java, Python, JavaScript or PHP, I disable the Java anti-alias setting and most fonts tend to look bad that way as they're designed for smoothing. Liberation though looks great with little to no distortion even without anti-aliasing enabled. I would have stuck with Dina (similar to it) since bitmap fonts do not get smoothed out by the OS or IDE, but many editors do not support bitmap fonts and the lack of UTF-8 support with Dina is a letdown as well. It's still a great font, just the tools I use end up being more important than the font itself. Compared to Deja Vu, Liberation has less distortion glyphs without smoothing enabled and much more readable. The real downside to Liberation Mono is the 0 has just a dot in the center of it instead of a full slash unlike Menlo (doesn't bother me as I can see it, but I would prefer a slash). Just for reference and because pictures give a better idea than my own preferences, here's a comparison: Deja Vu 12pt: http://imageshack.us/a/img543/9845/dejavu12.png http://imageshack.us/a/img543/9845/dejavu12.png Deja Vu 12pt (no font smoothing): http://imageshack.us/a/img547/858/dejavu12noaa.png http://imageshack.us/a/img547/858/dejavu12noaa.png Liberation Mono 13pt: http://imageshack.us/a/img43/691/liberation13.png http://imageshack.us/a/img43/691/liberation13.png Liberation Mono 13pt (no font smoothing): http://imageshack.us/a/img708/6315/liberation13noaa.png http://imageshack.us/a/img708/6315/liberation13noaa.png
chiph 14y ago
ProFont wasn't mentioned. It's a monospace truetype font designed to look it's best at 9 points size, so you get more code on the screen.
- creaktive 14y ago
  Just added the ProFont: http://slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/29/~what-are-the-best-programming-fonts~profont http://slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/29/~what-are-the-best-p...
fernly 14y ago
So which of these have a good complement of Unicode points?
- fernly 14y ago
  So to reply to my own question, a minimal standard would be the first four code blocks, plus Greek, math operators, and box drawing symbols. Anonymous Pro and Andale Mono reach this standard, Inconsolata doesn't. A higher standard would be Menlo and Courier New, both having all those plus the Greek Extended (with accents), Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic sets, and a mess of other symbols. Deja Vu Sans Mono is missing the Hebrew, at least the version I have, but adds a bunch of dingbats and miscellaneous symbols. Everson Mono (not mentioned in the subject article and not a great programming font) has even more, all the odd-ball language support like Lao and Gothic. Edit after checking the others mentioned: Only Menlo, Courier New, and Liberation Mono have Hebrew, a bit of a surprise given how much software is done in Israel. Those three have the largest complements of glyphs, and Liberation Mono is open and free.
reillyse 14y ago
The site needs to make it clearer which font is the best, it looks initially like it's a countdown from 50 of the best fonts (the second font has 49) and then when I get to the bottom there is a ton of them on 0 so I presume now they are votes.. pretty confusing
- subsection1h 14y ago
  The site needs to make it clearer which font is the best There is no best font.
kurrent 14y ago
I'd like to mention the font ProggyClean. After trying several fonts, this was the winner for me.
flyinglizard 14y ago
I'm using a font called zevv-peep, like it a lot. http://zevv.nl/play/code/zevv-peep/ http://zevv.nl/play/code/zevv-peep/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Qantourisc 14y ago
Warning: after clicking on vote you get a facebook-login pop-up.
account_taken 14y ago
Why did he color certain characters? It makes those chars standout which defeats the purpose of choosing a font for distinct shapes.
Marazan 14y ago
monofur for life. It's a pretty quixotic font but I haven't seen one that has better clarity of distinguishing between characters as it.
Freaky 14y ago
You'll claw Misc Fixed SemiCondensed 6x13 out of my cold dead hands. Nothing beats a good bitmap font for crisp rendering at smaller sizes. http://i.imgur.com/afWazoB.png http://i.imgur.com/afWazoB.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html http://www.twoevils.org/html/files.html http://www.twoevils.org/html/files.html (TrueType version)

212 points by hbbio 14y ago

n1c 14y ago

As a lover of Inconsolata I never felt the 1/l was all that similar (re: Inconsolata-g).

StuieK 14y ago
It wasn't a huge deal for me, but I could tell that Inconsolata-g had enough of an improvement to warrant the change.
hbbio 14y ago
And even strongly statically typed languages won't catch the typo if l is of type int...
itafroma 14y ago
The 1/l distinction isn't that bad, but the curved quotation marks and apostrophe were enough to warrant a variant, Inconsolata-dz[1]. Looks like Inconsolata-g is actually built upon the -dz variant because it includes the straight quotation marks and apostrophe. [1]: http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/ http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...
jackalope 14y ago
They're not. That comparison was taken from the Inconsolata-g page and is either outdated or inaccurate. Visit the Inconsolata page to see the actual font (which hasn't changed since 2009, I believe): http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

oofabz 14y ago

I like serifs so I use Luxi Mono. It used to be the RedHat console font and it was inspired by the Sun console font. On Debian it's in the ttf-xfree86-nonfree package.

mbq 14y ago
+1 For Luxi Mono; technically it is terrible for programming (0&O and 1&l pairs look almost the same), but I'm somehow addicted to it. So I really hope one day someone will make open source "Luxi Mono-g" clone...

walshemj 14y ago

Why do none of them have slashed zeros and german style 7's and Z with a slash which are 3 things I want in a font designed for programming.

fredleblanc 14y ago
I've been using Glyphs on a Mac to create web-icon fonts for the site I make, but it also seems to be able to edit fonts (most of the time). I don't really know a ton about font-making, but it seems that with most of the fonts you'd edit, the kerning and all that is already defined. If it's a matter of adding a couple slashes to 7's/Z's or to 0's, that should be reasonably straight-forward to do. In Glyphs, it would be a matter of adding a new shape for the slash wherever you want it. Then File -> Export and you're on your way. (And obviously you might run into license violations if you're changing fonts you're not allowed to. This post isn't meant to address the legal side of it, just a guy at his desk fixing fonts for his own use.) (Edit: typo.)
igravious 14y ago
What's so important with having slashes on 7s and Zs?
- kd0amg 14y ago
  I do it in handwriting to make them easier to distinguish from 1 and 2, though in typed text, they tend to look different enough for me.
- walshemj 14y ago
  Its some what old school it's to stop confusing similar symbols O and 0 for example - It may be more common in the more technical branches of programming and in science and tech fields.
notatoad 14y ago
You want both the 7s and Zs slashed? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
- 14y ago

wahnfrieden 14y ago

Menlo

edwintorok 14y ago

My favourite is Linux Libertine Monospaced, available since v5.3.0: http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=2&L=1 http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=2&L=1 You can try it out if you select Monospaced from the dropdown here: http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=86&L=1 http://www.linuxlibertine.org/index.php?id=86&L=1 Other than that from that list of fonts, Source Code Pro looks quite good too.

hmottestad 14y ago

My favorite is Verdana. Yes. A proportional font for programming. In the beginning I hated tabs and white space, until I just got used to it. Now it's much easier to read my own code. Words jump out of the text because spaces are spaces and "i" doesn't make me doubt for a split second where the word starts and ends.

alcuadrado 14y ago
Interesting, but how do you know if you passed the column 80? how do you work when the coding standards mix tabs and spaces (like tab for indenting, spaces for multi-line aligning)?
- hmottestad 14y ago
  First off I'm a student. Though the last summer job I had people didn't really care that much. Tabs/spaces doesn't really matter much. 80 char width also never been a problem. If it makes sense to have it on a 150 char line, then so be it. If it makes sense to split it up, then do that. The only time I ran into length problems was when I was asked to print my code on A4 paper for an exam.
  - alcuadrado 14y ago
    80 coloumns avoid that (and other) problems. mixing tabs and spaces is strange and IMO should be avoided, but it sometimes happen :( all-spaces FTW
- VLM 14y ago
  I don't use a proportional font like the OP but graphics art stuff like that is best handled by computer. For example if you do sysadmin scripts in perl and edit with vim and have perltidy installed, its more or less just (esc) :%! perltidy (enter) and it looks beautiful. Gave up on 80 columns a couple years ago. Haven't looked back much.
- Stratoscope 14y ago
  Those are coding standards designed for monospaced fonts. They work poorly with proportional fonts, but there is a simple solution: abandon those standards. With regard to indenting vs. column alignment, don't do column alignment. Code is an outline. It's not a spreadsheet. Column alignment is not beneficial in most cases, and it wreaks havoc with source control diffs. Is it really better to code like this: double someFunctionName( int index, // counts things SomeType secondParamWithStuff, // fancy object with stuff SomeLongerNamedType third ) // whatever instead of this: double someFunctionName( int index, // counts things SomeType secondParamWithStuff, // fancy object with stuff SomeLongerNamedType third // whatever ) Now sure, the second version may look a bit sloppy if you're used to the first, but it has several real advantages: * Much less horizontal eye movement * No eye tracking across wide swaths of whitespace * Changing one name doesn't require reformatting the whole thing * Since you don't have to reformat, it doesn't generate unrelated diffs * It works equally well in proportional or monospaced fonts Oddly enough, many years ago I switched to the second style, not because I was using a proportional font at the time, but because I was really tired of reformatting multiple lines of code just because I'd refactored one variable or type name. And then some time later I tried a proportional font. My code looked fine in the proportional font, and it was still just as readable in a monospaced font. WRT 80 columns or whatever your limit is, I just don't worry about that. I generally keep my lines quite a bit shorter than that, but if a particular piece of code is more readable with a longer line, I don't sweat it.

rhengles 14y ago

It's a shame Lucida Console is at last position, I like it a lot.

eterm 14y ago
Really this site should have randomised the order in which the font samples appear. Right now, votes are directly influenced by page order, which I suppose is indicative that people don't feel strongly about their fonts.
- ben336 14y ago
  uh, the correlation goes the other way. They're sorted by page order. The popular ones get voted up.
- T-R 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely be iterating on how we rank and present viewpoints to try to reduce bias. We don't want to remove indicators of popularity entirely, though, since that would reduce the utility of the site for readers who are still trying to decide. We do intend, though, to at least provide enough information for users to judge where there may be bias for themselves, and we'll try to eliminate it where we can.
vangale 14y ago
I wanted to add a vote for Lucida Console, but stopped when it was asking me to login. Oh well! I like the letter shapes in some other fonts better, but Lucida Console is the only one with proper horizontal width IMHO, although it could be I've just been using it too long.

danjessen 14y ago

Currently use Pragmata Pro ... It's different, and thats proberbly why I'm trying it out for a while. I use it with Sublime Text 2 and the scheme called Big Duo http://cl.ly/image/3M413B322I1O http://cl.ly/image/3M413B322I1O

b3b0p 14y ago

On Windows I have been using Envy Code R http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-coding-font-released http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod... or Source Code Pro https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro On Mac, I use Source Code Pro or Menlo.

PavlovsCat 14y ago
I'll second Envy Code R; I use it in bold for better readability at small size.

dschuler 14y ago

The instructions for the Consolas font on Mac OS include downloading an Office update for Mac and extracting the font. I just realized that I already have the font installed, since I also have a copy of Office installed :)

shakesbeard 14y ago

Recently switched from Consolas to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Has been a good experience so far. http://i.imgur.com/qNlpYvn.png http://i.imgur.com/qNlpYvn.png http://www.dafont.com/bitstream-vera-mono.font http://www.dafont.com/bitstream-vera-mono.font

fjordan 14y ago
+1 for Bitstream Vera Sans Mono!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
georgebashi 14y ago
There's a fork of Bitstream Vera called DejaVu, which adds support for a huge range of characters: http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  +1. That has been my perfect mono font for the last 1-2 years.

osener 14y ago

My favorite fixed-width font is Akkurat Mono. It is by far the best font I've ever used but unfortunately it is quite pricey. Here's how it looks on my system: http://ozansener.com/images/github-browse-file-1.png http://ozansener.com/images/github-browse-file-1.png Homepage: http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat+Mono/ http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkur...

methehack 14y ago
Wow, purty screenshot. What's the emacs theme you're using?
- osener 14y ago
  Tomorrow Night (https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-tomorrow/ https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-tomorrow/)
lobster_johnson 14y ago
Looks almost indistinguishable from DejaVu Sans Mono [1]. Screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/MYB1i5N.png http://i.imgur.com/MYB1i5N.png [1] http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page
- codex 14y ago
  In my experience it's nicer than DSM on the Mac.
- lbotos 14y ago
  What Theme is this?
  - lobster_johnson 14y ago
    My tweaked version of Monokai: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/Monokai%202.tmTheme https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12091499/Share/Monokai%2....

StuieK 14y ago

Site is getting hugged to death by you guys, working on getting it back up. Sorry!

alcuadrado 14y ago

11pt in the demos? Real programmers use 10pt!

ryanhorn 14y ago

Awesome, I've been looking for something like this. Would be even more awesome if the fonts were embedded with a syntax highlighted editor ;)

jimmahoney 14y ago

Anonymous Pro

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

platz 14y ago

When did Monaco fall out of favor? What don't people like about it? I kind of like it's angularity.

peterhil 14y ago
These newfangled Mac OS X users have not used it enough to appreciate it’s pixel-perfected beauty. I’ve been using it as my monospaced font of choice since 1996 when I started to use Macs.
YooLi 14y ago
When Menlo replaced it in 10.6?
maxjacobson 14y ago
that's what i like to use!

brianpgordon 14y ago

These have some poor screenshots. Compare their Terminus screenshot with mine: http://i.imgur.com/4NhZ3h2.png http://i.imgur.com/4NhZ3h2.png http://i.imgur.com/yaCGIWG.png http://i.imgur.com/yaCGIWG.png

qu4z-2 14y ago
Agreed. As someone who uses Terminus I opened the link and said "What?! That's not what Terminus looks like!"
anonymous 14y ago
Terminus starts looking slightly bad in bold and slanted variants and their editor looks like uses it bolded for some reason. Personally, I love Terminus and use it for my terminal and text editor with GNU Unifont as fallback for Asian scripts.

adregan 14y ago

It's not free, but iA's writer got me hooked on Nitti: http://www.boldmonday.com/en/nitti http://www.boldmonday.com/en/nitti I love working in that typeface and have it set to default in Sublime Text and Terminal.

jongold 14y ago

Offbeat suggestion (and definitely not free or readily available) - LineTo Akkurat Mono. I've always been a little bit obsessed with monospace type & this is definitely my favourite. I use it in Sublime, Vim & iTerm 2 - hate using Macs that don't have it installed. http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat+Mono/ http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkur...

bliker 14y ago

I think it is worth mentioning that font-smoothing can be a great improvement on windows.

antihero 14y ago

Can't do without Tamzen. An efficient use of pixels, and big enough for me to read. If you have even a mildly decent display (1920x1080 at 15.6"), pixel fonts are beautiful and readable.

codex 14y ago

No Pragmata or Akkurat Mono? Amateurs.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

Source Code Pro looks way, way better on my machine. I hate what Macs do to fonts. http://i.imgur.com/DRywIsw.png http://i.imgur.com/DRywIsw.png

cpeterso 14y ago

If you'd like to see tiny fonts taken to the extreme, check out "The Bee’s Knees", a font with x-height of 3 pixels but surprisingly legible because it uses subpixel rendering: http://www.sitepoint.com/two-teeny-tiny-fonts/ http://www.sitepoint.com/two-teeny-tiny-fonts/

q_revert 14y ago

moved around a fair bit between DejaVu Sans Mono/Inconsolata/Consolas etc before eventually settling on Ubuntu Mono, which really holds up extremely well at smaller sizes (7/8 pt)

chj 14y ago

I used Inconsolata and thought I would never switch again. Now I am finding myself using Ubuntu Mono. It's not that Inconsolata is bad or something, I guess you will get bored anyhow after one or two years.

alexvr 14y ago

Consolas & Monaco <3

hfz 14y ago

So I browsed around for a free alternative of Nitti, most popularly known as iA Writer's font. Someone recommended an alternative: Cousine. http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine It's my new favorite now.

herge 14y ago

Nobody has mentioned mensch! (http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html) Mostly like Menlo except with really big angled brackets and a more conventional l.

Splendor 14y ago
Those giant angle brackets make lambdas look too weird for me.

the1 14y ago

i thought better fonts make me a better programmer. i was wrong.

rbanffy 14y ago

I still prefer the 3278 feel of https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font (which is why I did it). Love the retro touch it gives my terminal. Now, if only Gnome Terminal supported phosphor persistence...

micampe 14y ago
Not Gnome Terminal, but http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/02/xscreensaver-415/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/02/xscreensaver-415/
qznc 14y ago
He lp, the kerning in your eva lua t ion screenshot looks terrible. I prefer other Op t ions. ;)
- leephillips 14y ago
  It's a fixed-width font. It doesn't have kerning.

rshm 14y ago

no mention of liberation mono here. I find it like verdana of monospaced fonts. http://i.imgur.com/ejCs0nG.png http://i.imgur.com/ejCs0nG.png

yareally 14y ago

I'm surprised Liberation Mono[1][2] (similar to the Deja Vu font) is not on the list or the bitmap font, Dina[3]. I end up using Liberation Mono much more nowadays (which is similar to Dina), since bitmap fonts don't have support in a lot of development tools and Dina has no real UTF-8 support. However, Dina was my first real "programming font" I used and still love it where I can use it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts [2] https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ [3] http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/ http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/

StuieK 14y ago
Hey man, feel free to add it! (the entire site is collaboratively written)
- yareally 14y ago
  Will do :) I just found it surprising no one else had added them already.
wahnfrieden 14y ago
How is it better than Menlo, also based on Deja Vu?
- yareally 14y ago
  It's hard for me to give you an exact comparison (because I'm not an OSX user and have never used Menlo), but I can give you an idea based on a comparison to Deja Vu (on both Linux and Windows 7). Some of my reasons are preference (what looks better) and some are factual (like spacing). Liberation Mono is a more vertically compact font, but I consider it just as readable as Deja Vu. I can fit around 7 more lines on my 1920x1200 monitor with 13pt Liberation versus 12pt Deja Vu. Deja Vu just takes up way more space than it needs to and (my opinion) does not make it anymore readable than Liberation or Dina. I generally dislike anti-aliasing/smoothing on fonts when writing code in certain editors/ides (looking at you Intellij Idea). I don't mind it elsewhere, but Java just sucks at rendering fonts with its generic anti-aliasing scheme. Since I dislike it in Intellij and I use their IDE quite a bit for Android/Java, Python, JavaScript or PHP, I disable the Java anti-alias setting and most fonts tend to look bad that way as they're designed for smoothing. Liberation though looks great with little to no distortion even without anti-aliasing enabled. I would have stuck with Dina (similar to it) since bitmap fonts do not get smoothed out by the OS or IDE, but many editors do not support bitmap fonts and the lack of UTF-8 support with Dina is a letdown as well. It's still a great font, just the tools I use end up being more important than the font itself. Compared to Deja Vu, Liberation has less distortion glyphs without smoothing enabled and much more readable. The real downside to Liberation Mono is the 0 has just a dot in the center of it instead of a full slash unlike Menlo (doesn't bother me as I can see it, but I would prefer a slash). Just for reference and because pictures give a better idea than my own preferences, here's a comparison: Deja Vu 12pt: http://imageshack.us/a/img543/9845/dejavu12.png http://imageshack.us/a/img543/9845/dejavu12.png Deja Vu 12pt (no font smoothing): http://imageshack.us/a/img547/858/dejavu12noaa.png http://imageshack.us/a/img547/858/dejavu12noaa.png Liberation Mono 13pt: http://imageshack.us/a/img43/691/liberation13.png http://imageshack.us/a/img43/691/liberation13.png Liberation Mono 13pt (no font smoothing): http://imageshack.us/a/img708/6315/liberation13noaa.png http://imageshack.us/a/img708/6315/liberation13noaa.png

chiph 14y ago

ProFont wasn't mentioned. It's a monospace truetype font designed to look it's best at 9 points size, so you get more code on the screen.

creaktive 14y ago
Just added the ProFont: http://slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/29/~what-are-the-best-programming-fonts~profont http://slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/29/~what-are-the-best-p...

fernly 14y ago

So which of these have a good complement of Unicode points?

fernly 14y ago
So to reply to my own question, a minimal standard would be the first four code blocks, plus Greek, math operators, and box drawing symbols. Anonymous Pro and Andale Mono reach this standard, Inconsolata doesn't. A higher standard would be Menlo and Courier New, both having all those plus the Greek Extended (with accents), Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic sets, and a mess of other symbols. Deja Vu Sans Mono is missing the Hebrew, at least the version I have, but adds a bunch of dingbats and miscellaneous symbols. Everson Mono (not mentioned in the subject article and not a great programming font) has even more, all the odd-ball language support like Lao and Gothic. Edit after checking the others mentioned: Only Menlo, Courier New, and Liberation Mono have Hebrew, a bit of a surprise given how much software is done in Israel. Those three have the largest complements of glyphs, and Liberation Mono is open and free.

reillyse 14y ago

The site needs to make it clearer which font is the best, it looks initially like it's a countdown from 50 of the best fonts (the second font has 49) and then when I get to the bottom there is a ton of them on 0 so I presume now they are votes.. pretty confusing

subsection1h 14y ago
The site needs to make it clearer which font is the best There is no best font.

kurrent 14y ago

I'd like to mention the font ProggyClean. After trying several fonts, this was the winner for me.

flyinglizard 14y ago

I'm using a font called zevv-peep, like it a lot. http://zevv.nl/play/code/zevv-peep/ http://zevv.nl/play/code/zevv-peep/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Qantourisc 14y ago

Warning: after clicking on vote you get a facebook-login pop-up.

account_taken 14y ago

Why did he color certain characters? It makes those chars standout which defeats the purpose of choosing a font for distinct shapes.

Marazan 14y ago

monofur for life. It's a pretty quixotic font but I haven't seen one that has better clarity of distinguishing between characters as it.

Freaky 14y ago

You'll claw Misc Fixed SemiCondensed 6x13 out of my cold dead hands. Nothing beats a good bitmap font for crisp rendering at smaller sizes. http://i.imgur.com/afWazoB.png http://i.imgur.com/afWazoB.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html http://www.twoevils.org/html/files.html http://www.twoevils.org/html/files.html (TrueType version)