The Best Programming Fonts

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/05/01/top-10-programming-fonts/

by ajbatac • 17 years ago

14 27 17 years ago

yan• 17 years ago

It's not mentioned, but I love Pragmata[1]. It's expensive, but gorgeous and very usable. And I stand by what I said about it earlier: http://twitter.com/yan_i/status/1442859670

[1] http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragma.htm

weaksauce• 17 years ago

Wow. 90 euro for a font is pricey.

It looks nice. What makes it better than the other programming fonts? or is it a general feeling when you use it?

pavelludiq• 17 years ago

I used to like Monaco, but its parentheses are kind of annoying if you program in a lisp like language, or if you need to nest a lot of parentheses. Now im using dejavu sans mono.

_giu2• 17 years ago

my favorite programming font (and I think it is a pity that the article doesn't mention it): Envy Code R (http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...)

I just love this font! it's such a beautiful piece of font-design and I only can recommend you to try it out!

badger7• 17 years ago

Grunties's comment FTW. "monospace good, non-monospace bad, all other considerations irrelevant. Next?"

_giu2• 17 years ago

that's the same thought I had when I saw that Arial was the first item on their list. I once tried to use a non-monospaced font, but that lasted only a few seconds. it just doesn't fit!

utx00• 17 years ago

inconsolata

droid-sans mono

jemmons2• 17 years ago

Both great!

I would add Envy Code R: http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...

Sephr• 17 years ago

Same here, I love both of those fonts (except for Inconsolata's quotes).

dimitar• 17 years ago

How about the X11 "fixed" font and my favorite - "terminus"?

Fixed, by the way is the font you see when you start xterm in most environments. Hold Ctrl and the RMB while the mouse cursor is in a xterm window and you can see it in different sizes

riobard• 17 years ago

I guess platform/rendering engine difference should be taken into consideration when choosing the "best" fonts. Same font is usually rendered very differently on different platforms with anti-aliasing on. For example, Monaco looks fantastic on Mac, but just so-so on Windows/Linux. (Though for bitmap fonts this seems not a real issue.)

socratees• 17 years ago

Arial? I've tried using non monospace fonts for code. They've never worked out for me.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

I think it might be dependent on what language you use. In Perl, alignment is very important, as you have a lot of code that looks like:

   my $foo = Foo->new(
      named_initargs => 'go here',
      and_also       => 'here',
   );

(There are various technical reasons to avoid this style, but I think it looks too nice to avoid.)

As a result, a non-monospaced font would be a nightmare.

However, perhaps if you are using a language where everything is positional (Java, C), then maybe it doesn't matter:

    Foo foo = new Foo(args, go, here,
        and, if, you, run, out, of, room,
        perhaps, they, can, be, written,
        like, this);

Note that the only alignment is the initial indentation; one space is always as wide as another space, so a variable-width font won't mess anything up.

Obviously if you are using Haskell or Python, you will care even more about alignment, and hence will want a monospaced font. You will also want a monospaced font in your terminal emulator, as most console apps depend on all glyphs being equally wide.

jemmons2• 17 years ago

Number one is Arial? Way to blow all credibility right up front.

blogimus• 17 years ago

The fonts are listed in alphabetical order.

But still, as stated in the article:

"It can be a little difficult to distinguish between uppercase i / lowercase L and nested single/double quotes but that can be said of many proportional fonts."

For source code editing, I'll stick to a monospaced font myself.

viggity• 17 years ago

Agreed. If a new person starts working with me and they are not using a fixed width font, I immediately question their sanity and their skills.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

Don't use Vera, use DejaVu. It's the same font, but with many more Unicode characters. (λ looks much nicer after I made the switch.)

Link: http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

bitwize• 17 years ago

Terminus. LispM font.

Smoothed blended TrueType programming fonts are for clove-cigarette-smoking nancy boys.

wastedbrains• 17 years ago

I am a big fan of Anonymous, it is currently my emacs code font.

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

puns• 17 years ago

+1 for Anonymous. It's a great font to use on OS X, especially if you're using light font on a dark background, as OS X tends to render the fonts much heavier and blurrier with antialiasing. Anonymous remains fairly crisp.

neovive• 17 years ago

++ for Dina. It's an excellent programming font and looks great even at 8pt. It allows you to see much more code per screen.

nimbix• 17 years ago

I'm perfectly happy with Courier New. Most editors on windows use it by default and I never felt the need to change it.

blackman• 17 years ago

I like triskweline http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/triskweline/

Zev• 17 years ago

Espresso Mono gets my vote nowadays. Prior to that, I was using Consolas for the prior year or so.

I think I used Monaco or Inconsolata before that. Can't really remember.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

I've been happily using Proggy Clean for a while. It's even surprisingly readable printed at low point size.

windsurfer• 17 years ago

Proggy is nice if your screen is 640x480 and CRT, but I think LCD screens and font smoothing has made that font irrelevant.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

Mm, works nicely for me at 1280 x 1024 a monitor. Also quite reasonable-looking printed.

The Best Programming Fonts

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