Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

Thanks, that's one snazzy programming font. I'm definitely giving it a try. Edit: it's nice at small sizes. They should have made a hairline variant though, for larger sizes, as it's pretty bold and the characters aren't as distinct as the could be. Think I'll keep using it for a while longer and see how it goes

emikulic• 12 years ago

Terminus, Proggy, or Triskweline. I can't stand stroked fonts in a terminal.

GnarfGnarf3• 12 years ago

Courier New (Visual Studio). I keep trying other stuff, but they are a distraction. Courier New does not draw attention to itself, just seems to blend in, and the code communicates directly to you.

teamhappy• 12 years ago

I'm a huge fan of Adobe's Source Code Pro, but you might wanna take a look at Courier Prime: http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/

GnarfGnarf3• 12 years ago

Courier Prime is a very attractive font. Unfortunately the leading (inter-line spacing, pronounced "ledding") is 18% bigger than Courier New. In a full screen of code, I lose 7 lines. That means less visible code, more scrolling up & down. I suppose there are font editors to adjust that.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Prefinem• 12 years ago

Deja Vu Sans Mono

izietto• 12 years ago

Ubuntu Mono https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Ubuntu+Mono I like it a lot.

Here an example of Sublime Text 3 + Ubuntu Mono 10pt + Blackboard Theme: http://imgur.com/qW8yyi0

sp3322• 12 years ago

I like Ubuntu Mono, but on some screens (probably depending on antialiasing settings?) it looks too fuzzy and I switch to Inconsolata. It seems one of those two will look good in any setting. Or if I have to deal with no anti-aliasing, Proggy TT is a nice (small, ~9pt) monochrome font.

cranium• 12 years ago

I use Ubuntu Mono 14pt in iTerm2 and kinda like using a font that big ! http://imgur.com/7Bdtuge

qzc4• 12 years ago

What triangle character are you using there in your prompt? Sorry, but I haven't found a way to make it 'stick' to the background before it using any font (at least at 14pt).

Edit: OK, I found the character/theme you are using, but what version of Ubuntu Mono do you have? It won't handle that for me :/

Edit 2: I found a Powerline patched version, but that doesn't seem to work either… Maybe I will just switch back to Consolas

thegeomaster3• 12 years ago

I used Inconsolata, Monaco, Source Code Pro, Consolas, Pragmata Pro, but in the end settled with Ubuntu Mono. I use it in Vim with the great Solarized color scheme, and it's a pleasure to look at.

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

Segoe UI. I will never use a fixed width font again, though I wish I could find something better then Segoe.

Argorak2• 12 years ago

Fira Sans Mono.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/products/firefox-os... (not displayed, but the download includes a Mono variant)

spatz• 12 years ago

Fira Mono is really beautiful, but the problem I have with it is the vertical spacing. The lines are so far apart, almost nothing fits in the screen.

Argorak2• 12 years ago

One's joy, the others pain. I like that ;).

davewiner3• 12 years ago

Geneva. I don't understand why programmers use monospace fonts, other than some kind of tradition.

yangyang2• 12 years ago

Alignment probably more than anything, though obviously the necessity for that depends on the language and style.

davewiner3• 12 years ago

Alignment of what??

Not left edges. Even in non-monospace fonts, every blank is the same with, same with every tab.

iopq• 12 years ago

I actually tried a programming font that is not monospace and it's not an issue. Left side is aligned the same anyway and I don't care if lines don't align on the right side.

GnarfGnarf3• 12 years ago

That is an interesting observation. Perhaps it is due to habit. After 45 years of programming (started with punched cards), I am accustomed to fixed-pitch fonts. Proportional fonts for code seem unintelligible to me.

It is worth noting that all quality programming publications display code in fixed pitch. Knuth, in his epochal "Art of Computer Programming", uses fixed-pitch serif for source code. Petzold's "Programming Windows" uses fixed-pitch, as does Kernighan & Ritchie's "The C Programming Language".

davewiner3• 12 years ago

I also use monospace font when publishing bits of source, it helps set it off from the rest of the text.

But in the code itself, this isn't a consideration.

thaumaturgy• 12 years ago

Because I work with data pretty often, and working with data pretty much requires a monospace font, and there's no reason for me to switch back and forth.

For example, cli mysql wouldn't be too much fun in Geneva. There's a nice visual hint between labels and data in lines of whois output, and that hint would be icky in a proportional typeface:

    status:      reallocated
    owner:       NETLINE PERU
    ownerid:     PE-NEPE4-LACNIC

Also, log files with columns like timestamp [ip] etc., and some particularly friendly configuration files.

And, although it's not very common, I occasionally use it as a typo-checker. If I have a function or a class where I can't easily abstract out some kind of repetition, then using a monospaced font with variables that are the same number of characters lets me visually see right away if I've mistyped something. I couldn't quickly find an example, but it was the first programming-specific monospace font thing that came to mind.

h1d• 12 years ago

BPMono

jimlei• 12 years ago

I think the default fonts work great so I have never changed the font of the editor(s) I use. Am I weird?

sjtrny• 12 years ago

No, I'm the same way too. I've never even thought about changing the font in IDEs or terminal.

bberrry• 12 years ago

I am hugely anal about this topic and I've tried all fonts mentioned at the time of this post. In the end, Consolas has racked up the most miles during my coding and Proggy Tiny for the output console (allows you to fit quite a lot). Don't get me started on color theme.

isxek• 12 years ago

Proggy Tiny for the input console

I would humbly suggest trying either MonteCarlo [1] or its derivative, Tamsyn [2]. Certain characters (like the "@" symbol) look much better in either of these fonts.

[1] http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/ [2] http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn-font/

swah5• 12 years ago

Tamsyn doesn't work for me in Sublime Text 3 - do you know why?

gjvc• 12 years ago

X11 10x20 since 1996

lucianp2• 12 years ago

My favorite is Source Code Pro by Adobe [1]. I use it on Mac OS X and Ubuntu. On Windows I have to use Consolas, because SCP does not render well in gVim for Windows (at least not on my system).

Note that Source Code Pro does not have an Italic typeface yet. Italics are commonly used for source code comments and most editors will automatically emulate the shapes, often with poor results. Active development is currently being done in this direction [2].

[1]. http://dwabyick.github.io/Source-Code-Pro

[2]. https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/issues/6

quantisan2• 12 years ago

[2] was raised in 2012 and still in discussion. I have no idea how fonts are made. Why does it take 2+ years to make a font italic?

Tomte• 12 years ago

Because you need to come up with a design for the cursive variant and then draw all those glyphs.

So the time needed is probably shorter than the time spent on the regular variant, but only by a small factor, certainly not orders of magnitude.

lukeholder• 12 years ago

Its not just in discussion, a person has been commissioned and working on it for quite a while. it was 2 days he push the latest version.

thegeomaster3• 12 years ago

Just a minor nitpick: you are probably referring to an oblique style, not italic. Italic style implies a calligraphic handwriting look-alike, and is way more common with serif typefaces. Oblique style is just glyphs tilted to right, and I think that's what you meant here. No offense intended, of course.

swah5• 12 years ago

"No offense intended?" Even the system font selector uses "italic" ...

grakic• 12 years ago

PragmataPro

antonios• 12 years ago

I'll second that. Very nice and well-hinted font, with quite a bit of unicode coverage as well. Definitely worth the money.

neonlex• 12 years ago

I used this font since more than a year. It's great but a week ago I started using Source Code Pro.

Jgrubb• 12 years ago

I always try out the others, but I always come back to Monaco.

8ig8• 12 years ago

Build your own...

http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/

dham• 12 years ago

Source Code Pro

irickt• 12 years ago

Luxi mono, because it has the most attractive serifs I've seen.

Semaphor• 12 years ago

I used to use Anonymous Pro, now I use Consolas.

johncoltrane• 12 years ago

I've used Inconsolata exclusively (the original first [1], then the -dz variant [2], then the -g variant [3]) since 2002 or 2003.

I've recently switched to Fira Mono [4], designed by the awesome Erik Spiekermann for Mozilla.

[1] http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

[2] http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...

[3] http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/77079.html

[4] https://github.com/mozilla/Fira

robinhoodexe• 12 years ago

Source Code Pro

emilsoman• 12 years ago

14 pt Menlo Regular. Pic : https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1707078/3491472/9...

wsloth514• 12 years ago

Hermit 14pt

https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/

sever• 12 years ago

I'm a font fetishist, so over many years I've tried many fonts. Settled on Maax Mono [1], I find it to be remarkably beautiful.

[1] https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/gautier/maax-mono/

swah5• 12 years ago

Do you use it outisde retina environments?

p3lim• 12 years ago

Been using Proggy for a long time, it's a nice, readable monospace font.

teebsd• 12 years ago

Ubuntu Font http://font.ubuntu.com/

Tiksi• 12 years ago

I use tamsyn (http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn-font/) where I can. It's a bitmap font and looks great at small sizes. However since it's a bitmap font there's a few places that it can't be used.

swah5• 12 years ago

Interesting to me how the very clear bitmap fonts are so close to Terminus/linux fonts. Its almost like there is only one way to put the pixels.

swah5• 12 years ago

Nobody mentions if they use Retina when recommending those "newer" fonts. I imagine most fonts that "only look good in 48pt" in my screen can be used for coding in Retina screens (never seen one of those).

BUT when using low-dpi monitors, very few get the hinting right, and bitmap (6x13 [1]) is king.

[1] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/fonts/

Ragu• 12 years ago

I'm Mainly using google fonts. Its awesome and nice.Professional fonts are available at google fonts. Try it here https://www.google.com/fonts

We also tried font-family: 'Andika', sans-serif; http://courseeplus.com/aboutus/

tokanizar• 12 years ago

I just made a switch to Input (http://input.fontbureau.com). Before that, I used Source Code Pro.

Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

Related Stories