Going through this, I was introduced to <= being converted to a ligature which immediately ruled it as a nope for me. No monkey business with the characters of my code thank you very much.
> That is usually configurable at the terminal level
And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the buffer level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=` and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major modes, avoiding any confusion.
I'm not either. I think it may look "cool" visually but when trying to work with code with those in it, it seems odd, like that it's a single character even though it's not and it just breaks the flow
Something I never liked about this game is its showing it in your browser at your chosen font size.
Chrome (assuming you're using Chrome) draws it a specific way. This does not match how Freetype (using typical tuning) or DirectWrite draws it. Chrome's choices in font renderer tuning and blending makes it kind of split the difference between Windows-style and OSX-style, and isn't native to either.
What it should be doing is showing you lossless screenshots of actual in-app renders at different sizes. Some in Chrome (to represent the Electron apps), some in DirectWrite, some in OSX post-Retina, etc.
Some fonts look amazing at larger sizes, but are unreadable at smaller ones. Some perform exceptionally well at smaller sizes. Some look great on every font renderer but OSX's, but some only look right on OSX and look bad everywhere else.
I've sorta played this game with myself, in a semi-objective way: take a bunch of fonts, ignore the subjective art nature of them, and throw them at a bunch of common renderers and see what the optimal size is, and then sort by smallest legible size.
If we define Fira Code, the most popular code font out there, as the bare minimum, 8 of the ones I tested beat it, while 17 were worse.
Knowing that everything in here is people asking why their font is missing:
I highly recommend having a look at
[ MAPLE MONO ]
(on Github https://github.com/subframe7536/Maple-font).
It has amazing readability, looks nice, is compatible with NF if you use that.
I received compliments from people looking over my shoulder for my f'ing font?!
Huge shoutout to subframe7536 ^^
I've been a long time Fira Code user, but recently switched to Maple - I love it. Mostly because of the "single storey" `a`, but that's just a personal preference of mine.
Berkeley Mono, Iosevka, and Cascadia Code are missing which are my favorite fonts. The game handed me Roboto Mono instead.
What I noticed while playing was that when fonts are similar, I really pay attention to the rendering of "m" and "r". When they look off, the whole font looks off to me.
It's really funny that after going through all those fonts it landed on Ubuntu Mono for me which is what I use anyways to code in my terminal.
I wonder if it's Stockholm syndrome or if I really do prefer it. It's a totally fine font, I've never felt the need to change it. All the default open source mono fonts seem completely adequate I suppose.
I was intrigued by a font called Codemonkey. This site has lots of classic comic fonts, including WildWords which is used in pretty much every manga translation.
Cream is a very distinctive font. It’s perfect for Smalltalk. In the 1980s I remade it for the Apple II to be used in a game. Obviously very little text would fit on the screen it was used for.
similar situation here, but i used it because i thought it was funny... then kept it because it grew on me haha. had it for a few years, might give it a spin again
Yeah, a few years ago I tried the free ones, but eventually settled on Comic Code. I've been using it ever since - it's pleasant to code with. (If anyone is considering this - the "essentials" set with bold/italic is around $30. You don't need the full set.)
I clicked this link with the thought "I'm curious, but I don't think I really have strong opinions about fonts", and was almost immediately proven wrong with the revulsion I felt at Xanh Mono.
Though it turns out that VS Code default (Droid Sans Mono) is (to my eye) basically identical to my winner (Roboto Mono), so the exercise was mostly academic.
Nowadays I use a lot of Iosevka. Previously I was on Ubuntu and JetBrains Mono, both are great fonts. A bit of PT Mono as well, even Terminus for a bit. One of my favorites has got to be Liberation Mono though - the most readable font I’ve ever found, even if Iosevka lets me put more stuff on screen horizontally. Oh also I’ve started enjoying Cascadia Code recently, surprisingly pleasant.
Yeah I was disappointed that Cascadia was not in the fonts on the site. What won me over for Cascadia was: I decided to try it for a couple weeks. By the end, I was certain that Cascadia must be larger than my previous font because it was so much easier to read, so I opened two terminals side-by-side and counted the rows+columns that fit between my old font and Cascadia. To my complete shock, Cascadia fit a couple more lines on my screen, indicating that it was actually _smaller_ despite being easier to read.
Cool, obviously a lot of people are going to quibble about the default lineup (wheres Iosevka?) but for anyone who hasn't nailed down a preference it seems great!
That's very nice and I ended up with the same font I tend to use (Source Code Pro) vs the font I used before (Noto Sans Mono). Some features I'd love to see:
- An ELO-based version with many more variables, so that I can open the site from time to time and find more nice fonts
For me it's Berkeley Mono...I was unable to find anything that comes close to it. But this games is fun and the result is a font that is similar to my favourite
I have been on JetBrains Mono ever since it's release. I am getting FOMO from not using Berkely Mono, because it totally looks like something that would sit right with me.
As I get older I prefer the text on my screen to be bigger than usual. Most websites tend to have super small fonts for some reason.
For coding I much prefer fonts that are bold and easier to read. Who actually likes these whimsical cursive looking comments or super thin looking fonts?
Not entirely. The font "size" is the height of each character, not the width they take up or the stroke thickness. So some fonts will have narrow characters & display more characters horizontally than fonts with wider characters.
I stopped looking for fonts after I got comfortable tweaking the metric settings of Iosevka. My current setup exports a set of really compressed cuts (more compressed than Pragmata Pro) which I've always found hard to come by.
Surprised that I picked Oxygen Mono over Noto, but probably because I wasn't aware of Oxygen.
Would be nice to be able to play it with my own fonts because some got eliminated purely because 0 (zero) looked like O (letter). Fira Code was a winner only because there weren't paid fonts that I use.
I got PT Mono in the game, but this gave me the kick I needed to remember about ProggyClean[1] and track it down. Used to love it many years ago, time to give it another spin and see if it holds its own.
One nit about the site: the screen elements forced me to make my browser window more than half the size of my screen, and I use a 3840×2160 monitor. My windows are normally about ⅕ the size of the screen and roughly 4:3 ratio shaped. It was nearly unusable like that (I don't suffer issues from almost any other site.)
On the game/bracket: it narrowed me down to Noto Sans Mono and I'm honestly not surprised, it's one of the few fonts that comes with my operating system that I find acceptable.
That being said, what I actually have my terminal and Emacs set to is “AcPlus IBM VGA 8x16” from https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/. I've always been fond of the VGA font and it tickles all the right usability marks for me.
A few years ago I found comic mono and monofur for Powerline. I switch between the 2 when I get bored of one or the other. I decided I won't try any new fonts, it's a waste of time for me and I hate having too many options to choose from, not only fonts but basically everything else too, it's distracting. Same for my editor's theme, I switch between Braver's Solarized Light and Radical.
This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my environment.
> This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my environment.
I made myself my own pixel-perfect perfect font, more than 10 years ago. I simply copy it from one system to the next one when I upgrade (either the machine or the OS).
It's basically a modified pixel-perfect Terminus font, but with some elements mixed from an old pixel-perfect Monaco font and some modification of mine.
Something I cannot live without is a tall pipe symbol. And my pipe symbol must have a hole in it in the middle (and it cannot be mistaken for an exclamation mark).
I've got the following as a quick test. The reason for a,b,c,e is to verify that <>,{},[], etc. all perfectly align vertically.
Everything is correct, to the pixel.
I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on a retina display, and I love my 3840x1600 pixels 38" monitor and it's pixel size is perfect to me.
RA $|-sSTtf the little fortran
gqy z2Z s5S 8B CG6 DO uv ;; these should look different (8 / B is difficult to get right)
a!?aA! [a]
b!?b {b}
c?!d (c)
c?c <e>
c!c
if ( a && b || c & d) { [0x88, 0x42, 0xFA, 0xdeadcafebabe]; }
*if ( a && b || c & d) { [0x88, 0x42, 0xFA, 0xdeadcafebabe]; }*
;; found somewhere
lnt foob1x -= {(0)} "'foo'bar";
int foOblx == ((0)) 'foo`bar`' `"':
|nt f0obIx += {{o}} '"O08! LIl1i!!| 7?
the lowercase 's' has a shorter upper bar and the lowercase 'l' is stylised.
The thing is: I obsessed for days, creating my own pixel-perfect font. And I don't need to tweak it anymore: it's perfect (to me, YMMV) and I use it ever since.
Can't share it as I reused both Terminus and chars from Monaco.
FWIW I had more than 10/10 eyesight (once you get at 10, there are additional tests) and in my entire life I've never seen one person beat me at the "read sign on the highway". Pixel-perfect font, no AA, custom made font for me. YMMV. Haters gonna hate.
I'm probably your twin, separated at birth... may you share your bitmap font?
> I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on a retina display
This is a very good point. As resolution increases, antialiased fonts become less ugly, but also less necessary. Thus at no resolution they make any sense; but they look ridiculous for different reasons.
The font I use, IBM Plex Mono, I chose not because I love the font, but because it's the one I love most of the fonts with CJK variants (which basically means IBM Plex, Google Noto, or Adobe Source). It's unfortunate because I really like Libertinus (a rare serif monospace font), but trying to match different non-CJK and CJK fonts that work well together is annoying.
Lately I've taken to Iosevka, the 'curly' variant to be precise. Even though I hated it when I first tried it, I revisited it because I was noticing that, with coding agents running in the same window, I wanted to be able to see more at a glance. With Iosevka's semi-width glyphs you can just fit a lot more in the same space. Took a day or two to get used to its slender appearance. Now every other font feels unnecessarily w i d e
I wish the sample text included _underscores_, since I have occasionally found that they disappear with certain combinations of font + size + renderer.
And a run of all the numeric digits 0123456789, to show how their heights align.
And [square brackets], to show how easily they are distinguished from certain other glyphs.
And the vertical | bar, for the same reason.
...
Adobe Source Code Pro and Ubuntu Mono were my finalists. I think my preference would come down to window and font size, since Ubuntu Mono seemed to be narrower and leave more space between lines.
(Also, I kind of rushed the first few comparisons, so it's possible that I prematurely eliminated a typeface that I would have liked more.)
Neat educational game. Would have liked to see Maple Mono in the line up, but I'm sure you've gotta draw the line somewhere or the game would be too tedious.
I like, as it is quick to decide, and you can see font names afterwards (some indeed looked similar).
At the same time, it would be wonderful if window sizes were more consistent (now things are obstructed, with scrolling, etc). And I would love to download the ranking graph!
Doesn't it kind of default the purpose if you can't see it in the actual environment you'd be using it? I know the differences are very minor between terminals and browsers when it comes to font rendering, but this seems like a tool that should be a plugin with the editor people are intending to use the font with, rather than a website.
Obligatory shout-out to Berkeley Mono [1], which understandably isn't on this site because it's a paid font. I really enjoy the customizer that comes with it, I use the font on all my terminal/IDE environments, as well as on my blog.
(FWIW, I just did the codingfont bracket and got Source Code Pro, which I've used in the past, along with Iosevka and Commit Mono)
Played it twice to see if it's reproducible. First time, Fira Code; second time Source Code Pro. Source Code Pro came in second first time round as well. Been using Fira Code until now.
This kind of breaks for me because I identify all the familiar fonts quite quickly—Consolas, Inconsolata, Iosevka, JetBrains Mono, Fira Mono/Code, Menlo, SF Mono, Courier...
Been running Berkeley Mono for years. Before that i flipped fonts and theme like every week. I sometimes wish you could not change font or color theme at all.
I can sympathize; I shudder to think of how many total hours of my life I've spent tweaking fonts in my text editors.
That said, these days I almost exclusively use Input Mono [0], specifically the "Narrow" variety. With an occasional sprinkling of either Iosevka Fixed or PragmataPro Mono.
Same. Came down to Fira Code and PT Mono. I already use Fira Code, so I probably biased to what I'm used to. I do think that Fira Code is hard to beat when it comes to ambiguous characters.
- *: in the middle (better for things like multiplication), or high (better for things like C pointers)
- Alignment of =, >, - some fonts align -, = and > to that "=>" and "->" look good, others will not, making it arguably look better in isolation, others will optimize for ligatures
- The "i" may look significantly different, some will prioritize consistency, others will prioritize making il1I look distinct. Same idea for 0/O
- Aspect ratio, do you want a wide font, making alignment, indentation, and special characters clearer, or a narrow font, allowing you to cram longer lines into a single screen.
These are compromises, and depending on your style and language, you may prefer one or the other.
It is sort of baffling that people make some of these hideous fonts, look at them, and decide to publish them regardless. A font where the lowercase i and l are indistinguishable? Okay...
The one use case I've seen for Dank Mono was presentations with an overhead projector at conferences. The cursive for italics can make some of the structure of the code more differentiated when viewing it at a distance.
Missing my favorite, Iosevka: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
Playing the game gave me Jetbrains Mono though.
Going through this, I was introduced to <= being converted to a ligature which immediately ruled it as a nope for me. No monkey business with the characters of my code thank you very much.
That is usually configurable at the terminal level- for example, both wezterm and ghostty have available configs to control this behavior.
> That is usually configurable at the terminal level
And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the buffer level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=` and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major modes, avoiding any confusion.
[1]: https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el
Good to know. I’ve been using ghostty and generally not a fan of the code ligatures (or just too stubborn to adapt!).
I'm not either. I think it may look "cool" visually but when trying to work with code with those in it, it seems odd, like that it's a single character even though it's not and it just breaks the flow
I like most ligatures, I wish I could selectively turn off just this one.
I don't like them as well. On this site, you can disable them with the checkbox on the top-right
Something I never liked about this game is its showing it in your browser at your chosen font size.
Chrome (assuming you're using Chrome) draws it a specific way. This does not match how Freetype (using typical tuning) or DirectWrite draws it. Chrome's choices in font renderer tuning and blending makes it kind of split the difference between Windows-style and OSX-style, and isn't native to either.
What it should be doing is showing you lossless screenshots of actual in-app renders at different sizes. Some in Chrome (to represent the Electron apps), some in DirectWrite, some in OSX post-Retina, etc.
Some fonts look amazing at larger sizes, but are unreadable at smaller ones. Some perform exceptionally well at smaller sizes. Some look great on every font renderer but OSX's, but some only look right on OSX and look bad everywhere else.
I've sorta played this game with myself, in a semi-objective way: take a bunch of fonts, ignore the subjective art nature of them, and throw them at a bunch of common renderers and see what the optimal size is, and then sort by smallest legible size.
If we define Fira Code, the most popular code font out there, as the bare minimum, 8 of the ones I tested beat it, while 17 were worse.
https://github.com/Diablo-D3/dotfiles/blob/master/fontsizes....
Knowing that everything in here is people asking why their font is missing: I highly recommend having a look at
[ MAPLE MONO ]
(on Github https://github.com/subframe7536/Maple-font). It has amazing readability, looks nice, is compatible with NF if you use that. I received compliments from people looking over my shoulder for my f'ing font?! Huge shoutout to subframe7536 ^^
I don’t like it. It looks amateurish in the same way Comic Sans looks to me. I suppose you’d love this if you also enjoy Comic Sans.
While we're dropping lesser-known coding fonts, here's my favorite, Lotion [0]. It's cute and playful but also very legible and clean.
[0] https://font.nina.coffee/
This one has a bit of... an Art Deco flavor, perhaps, is it?
I've been a long time Fira Code user, but recently switched to Maple - I love it. Mostly because of the "single storey" `a`, but that's just a personal preference of mine.
Italics turn into cursive... I cannot imagine ever wanting this in my IDE, but that's just me.
Seconding Maple Mono - it's very nice.
Berkeley Mono, Iosevka, and Cascadia Code are missing which are my favorite fonts. The game handed me Roboto Mono instead.
What I noticed while playing was that when fonts are similar, I really pay attention to the rendering of "m" and "r". When they look off, the whole font looks off to me.
Berkeley Mono was the first time I bought a font.
It's so good. Perfect even. And they have a really neat customization tool.
I've been using it for a few years now and they actually still occasionally release a new version of it. Haven't gotten tired of it yet.
The only complaint I have about it is that I had to do a hacky workaround to get my Nix setups to pull it in since it's proprietary.
I even forked their "Machine Report" tool (which presumes Debian) to make it work on Linux/NixOS by applying a "polyfill": https://github.com/pmarreck/usgc-machine-report-nixos-editio...
It's really funny that after going through all those fonts it landed on Ubuntu Mono for me which is what I use anyways to code in my terminal.
I wonder if it's Stockholm syndrome or if I really do prefer it. It's a totally fine font, I've never felt the need to change it. All the default open source mono fonts seem completely adequate I suppose.
My coding font is comic-shanns-mono, here's how it looks: https://github.com/jesusmgg/comic-shanns-mono?tab=readme-ov-...
I was intrigued by a font called Codemonkey. This site has lots of classic comic fonts, including WildWords which is used in pretty much every manga translation.
https://www.comicbookfonts.com/Code-Monkey-Variable-font-p/b...
Unfortunately plus signs display as blank spaces in the test drive. Oh well.
Reminds me of the original Smalltalk font.
Cream is a very distinctive font. It’s perfect for Smalltalk. In the 1980s I remade it for the Apple II to be used in a game. Obviously very little text would fit on the screen it was used for.
I initially used this one when I started playing around with Zed on a personal project, but I kept it and it has grown on me considerably.
similar situation here, but i used it because i thought it was funny... then kept it because it grew on me haha. had it for a few years, might give it a spin again
Comic Code Ligatures for me :D
Yeah, a few years ago I tried the free ones, but eventually settled on Comic Code. I've been using it ever since - it's pleasant to code with. (If anyone is considering this - the "essentials" set with bold/italic is around $30. You don't need the full set.)
Same. It has a double-storey a, which I prefer a lot.
I use comic mono myself
i like that way more than i would have thought simply based on the name.
Thanks, I hate it.
diabolical
I clicked this link with the thought "I'm curious, but I don't think I really have strong opinions about fonts", and was almost immediately proven wrong with the revulsion I felt at Xanh Mono.
Though it turns out that VS Code default (Droid Sans Mono) is (to my eye) basically identical to my winner (Roboto Mono), so the exercise was mostly academic.
Nowadays I use a lot of Iosevka. Previously I was on Ubuntu and JetBrains Mono, both are great fonts. A bit of PT Mono as well, even Terminus for a bit. One of my favorites has got to be Liberation Mono though - the most readable font I’ve ever found, even if Iosevka lets me put more stuff on screen horizontally. Oh also I’ve started enjoying Cascadia Code recently, surprisingly pleasant.
Yeah I was disappointed that Cascadia was not in the fonts on the site. What won me over for Cascadia was: I decided to try it for a couple weeks. By the end, I was certain that Cascadia must be larger than my previous font because it was so much easier to read, so I opened two terminals side-by-side and counted the rows+columns that fit between my old font and Cascadia. To my complete shock, Cascadia fit a couple more lines on my screen, indicating that it was actually _smaller_ despite being easier to read.
I enjoyed this, though my font preferences are pretty stable.
It would be nice if it showed you 1st, 2nd, semi-finalist, quarter-finalist...
It would also be nice to see progress of some kind, a few minutes in I was wondering if I was near completion or just getting started.
It does show you on the left. Just not on the certificate.
> t would also be nice to see progress of some kind
It's hidden behind the menu button on mobile.
Cool, obviously a lot of people are going to quibble about the default lineup (wheres Iosevka?) but for anyone who hasn't nailed down a preference it seems great!
Iosevka might be difficult to add because it has so many options. Then again, that's why I use it.
That's very nice and I ended up with the same font I tend to use (Source Code Pro) vs the font I used before (Noto Sans Mono). Some features I'd love to see:
- An ELO-based version with many more variables, so that I can open the site from time to time and find more nice fonts
- Some global stats
- Not losing the leaderboard after reloading
- Spline Sans Mono
No Commit Mono :( The GOAT - https://commitmono.com/
For me it's Berkeley Mono...I was unable to find anything that comes close to it. But this games is fun and the result is a font that is similar to my favourite
Another Berkeley Mono user here!
I came from Fira Code to JetBrains Mono to MonoLisa (several years each) then finally settled on Berkeley Mono and refuse to use anything else!
I have been on JetBrains Mono ever since it's release. I am getting FOMO from not using Berkely Mono, because it totally looks like something that would sit right with me.
I got Source Code Pro. My daily driver is currently 0xProto, but I didn't see that in the game (admittedly I think it's kinda rarely used).
I got the same result. I usually use Monaspace by GitHub. Interestingly, they both use texture healing.
https://github.com/githubnext/monaspace/blob/main/docs/Textu...
As I get older I prefer the text on my screen to be bigger than usual. Most websites tend to have super small fonts for some reason.
For coding I much prefer fonts that are bold and easier to read. Who actually likes these whimsical cursive looking comments or super thin looking fonts?
I ended up with "Roboto Mono" btw.
uh isn't the font size kinda independant from the font style?
Not entirely. The font "size" is the height of each character, not the width they take up or the stroke thickness. So some fonts will have narrow characters & display more characters horizontally than fonts with wider characters.
It is, but noone serious has time for appreciating latest trends in web typography, so we just hit the reader mode on load.
Sadly, IBM 3270 is missing from the lot. How can I write professional looking code that lasts a lifetime in anything less?
I also remember some nice ones designed to look like a smoothed VT-220 one.
I'd love to see a page which tracked stats for what the majority of users were picking
I stopped looking for fonts after I got comfortable tweaking the metric settings of Iosevka. My current setup exports a set of really compressed cuts (more compressed than Pragmata Pro) which I've always found hard to come by.
Might be interested in https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka which is my current go-to font.
now i'm curious. care to share you're settings?
Sure. The glyph replacements match the "plain" style of SF Mono, Inter, etc.
https://pastebin.com/d3RzBR6B
Surprised that I picked Oxygen Mono over Noto, but probably because I wasn't aware of Oxygen.
Would be nice to be able to play it with my own fonts because some got eliminated purely because 0 (zero) looked like O (letter). Fira Code was a winner only because there weren't paid fonts that I use.
Exactly, it's not really a "coding" font if 0 is like O
I got PT Mono in the game, but this gave me the kick I needed to remember about ProggyClean[1] and track it down. Used to love it many years ago, time to give it another spin and see if it holds its own.
There's a vector version[2] now too!
[1]: http://proggyfonts.net/
[2]: https://github.com/bluescan/proggyfonts/tree/master/ProggyVe...
Aaah, Ubuntu Mono, i found you, you little rascal
It's ... weirdly validating that what I ended up with is what I actually use (Source Code Pro).
Oh this is really cool, I did it and I landed on the font I've been using for years now: "Fira Code".
One nit about the site: the screen elements forced me to make my browser window more than half the size of my screen, and I use a 3840×2160 monitor. My windows are normally about ⅕ the size of the screen and roughly 4:3 ratio shaped. It was nearly unusable like that (I don't suffer issues from almost any other site.)
On the game/bracket: it narrowed me down to Noto Sans Mono and I'm honestly not surprised, it's one of the few fonts that comes with my operating system that I find acceptable.
That being said, what I actually have my terminal and Emacs set to is “AcPlus IBM VGA 8x16” from https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/. I've always been fond of the VGA font and it tickles all the right usability marks for me.
A few years ago I found comic mono and monofur for Powerline. I switch between the 2 when I get bored of one or the other. I decided I won't try any new fonts, it's a waste of time for me and I hate having too many options to choose from, not only fonts but basically everything else too, it's distracting. Same for my editor's theme, I switch between Braver's Solarized Light and Radical.
This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my environment.
> This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my environment.
I made myself my own pixel-perfect perfect font, more than 10 years ago. I simply copy it from one system to the next one when I upgrade (either the machine or the OS).
It's basically a modified pixel-perfect Terminus font, but with some elements mixed from an old pixel-perfect Monaco font and some modification of mine.
Something I cannot live without is a tall pipe symbol. And my pipe symbol must have a hole in it in the middle (and it cannot be mistaken for an exclamation mark).
I've got the following as a quick test. The reason for a,b,c,e is to verify that <>,{},[], etc. all perfectly align vertically.
Everything is correct, to the pixel.
I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on a retina display, and I love my 3840x1600 pixels 38" monitor and it's pixel size is perfect to me.
the lowercase 's' has a shorter upper bar and the lowercase 'l' is stylised.The thing is: I obsessed for days, creating my own pixel-perfect font. And I don't need to tweak it anymore: it's perfect (to me, YMMV) and I use it ever since.
Can't share it as I reused both Terminus and chars from Monaco.
FWIW I had more than 10/10 eyesight (once you get at 10, there are additional tests) and in my entire life I've never seen one person beat me at the "read sign on the highway". Pixel-perfect font, no AA, custom made font for me. YMMV. Haters gonna hate.
I'm probably your twin, separated at birth... may you share your bitmap font?
> I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on a retina display
This is a very good point. As resolution increases, antialiased fonts become less ugly, but also less necessary. Thus at no resolution they make any sense; but they look ridiculous for different reasons.
The font I use, IBM Plex Mono, I chose not because I love the font, but because it's the one I love most of the fonts with CJK variants (which basically means IBM Plex, Google Noto, or Adobe Source). It's unfortunate because I really like Libertinus (a rare serif monospace font), but trying to match different non-CJK and CJK fonts that work well together is annoying.
If you prefer proportional fonts, here's one that pads a 1/3 of a space before uppercase letters, so it makes camelCase more legible.
https://github.com/ericfortis/verdanacamel
This is very cool.
Anecdotal solely to me, very unnerving and even with formatting marks enabled makes me feel uneasy seeing a space without a space formatting mark.
yep, sometimes I switch to mono before sharing my screen
Lately I've taken to Iosevka, the 'curly' variant to be precise. Even though I hated it when I first tried it, I revisited it because I was noticing that, with coding agents running in the same window, I wanted to be able to see more at a glance. With Iosevka's semi-width glyphs you can just fit a lot more in the same space. Took a day or two to get used to its slender appearance. Now every other font feels unnecessarily w i d e
IBM Plex Mono -- I guess no one ever got fired for choosing IBM?
IBM Plex Mono Ultralight is a joy to look at on a high DPI display.
Do you mean Extralight, I can't seem to find the Ultralight. It's probably just my eyes getting older, but I start to prefer chunkier fonts and 18pt.
Plex is a beautiful font, and one of the few corporate fonts that I actually think works, while being recognizable as being IBM.
I wish it had my favorite in it so that I could do a blind test to see if it really is my favorite: https://juliamono.netlify.app
Fun. Interestingly the one that "won" for me isn't the one I normally use, which was one of the candidates, but I have used it a lot in the past.
Well, Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono ... - thank you!!!
Nothing comes close to Iosevka for me, after using it for a while it's hard to find the same mix of narrow+readable.
Ubuntu Mono. I have been using JetBrains Mono for last 2 years and surprisingly I rejected it in a second iteration.
I always end up with Consolas, Ubuntu Sans Mono and Hack.
Courier Prime won for me, I've always been a courier fan I guess because I wrote all my books in the 90s with it..
Neat.
I wish the sample text included _underscores_, since I have occasionally found that they disappear with certain combinations of font + size + renderer.
And a run of all the numeric digits 0123456789, to show how their heights align.
And [square brackets], to show how easily they are distinguished from certain other glyphs.
And the vertical | bar, for the same reason.
...
Adobe Source Code Pro and Ubuntu Mono were my finalists. I think my preference would come down to window and font size, since Ubuntu Mono seemed to be narrower and leave more space between lines.
(Also, I kind of rushed the first few comparisons, so it's possible that I prematurely eliminated a typeface that I would have liked more.)
Neat educational game. Would have liked to see Maple Mono in the line up, but I'm sure you've gotta draw the line somewhere or the game would be too tedious.
Source Code Pro was my winner in this test. I use Iosevka on a regular base
I already use Inconsolata but had customized it to a point where I didn't recognize it here. It won anyway. Validation!
It told me I should use Incosolata. I've used Consolas for as long as I can remember, so I guess they must be pretty similar.
Also, about half of these fonts look utterly unsuitable for coding to me. Nobody really needs serifs and loopy l's in a coding font, surely?
I like, as it is quick to decide, and you can see font names afterwards (some indeed looked similar).
At the same time, it would be wonderful if window sizes were more consistent (now things are obstructed, with scrolling, etc). And I would love to download the ranking graph!
Nice idea, would be good to add a third option for "these look indistinguishable" (and then I guess they could be bundled together in later stages).
Because I'm lazy, and forgetful, I went back to my comment from a previous time this was posted:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554715
Results: Roboto Mono !
My favourite one is Iosevka Extended.
Doesn't seem to serve rendered samples so you have to set "browser.display.use_document_fonts" to "1" to see anything useful.
I think it also requires internet access, so you have to enable internet.
Which is the default, and 99.9% of Firefox users, 99.99% of all users will not have this issue.
There are some good choices, but also some atrocious ones. My favourite coding font[0] is missing.
[0]: https://www.recursive.design/ and also available on Google Fonts[1]
[1]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Recursive
Doesn't it kind of default the purpose if you can't see it in the actual environment you'd be using it? I know the differences are very minor between terminals and browsers when it comes to font rendering, but this seems like a tool that should be a plugin with the editor people are intending to use the font with, rather than a website.
Thanks! A lot of fun!
I'm using Liberation Mono, and it's missing :( i got PT Mono though.
Obligatory shout-out to Berkeley Mono [1], which understandably isn't on this site because it's a paid font. I really enjoy the customizer that comes with it, I use the font on all my terminal/IDE environments, as well as on my blog.
(FWIW, I just did the codingfont bracket and got Source Code Pro, which I've used in the past, along with Iosevka and Commit Mono)
[1] https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono
Played it twice to see if it's reproducible. First time, Fira Code; second time Source Code Pro. Source Code Pro came in second first time round as well. Been using Fira Code until now.
This kind of breaks for me because I identify all the familiar fonts quite quickly—Consolas, Inconsolata, Iosevka, JetBrains Mono, Fira Mono/Code, Menlo, SF Mono, Courier...
Got Jetbrains Mono. Not a surprise as I used this font for a long time and I still use it for my terminal font.
But I prefer (and use) PragmataPro (not free) and it is not part of the test, sadly.
Been running Berkeley Mono for years. Before that i flipped fonts and theme like every week. I sometimes wish you could not change font or color theme at all.
I can sympathize; I shudder to think of how many total hours of my life I've spent tweaking fonts in my text editors.
That said, these days I almost exclusively use Input Mono [0], specifically the "Narrow" variety. With an occasional sprinkling of either Iosevka Fixed or PragmataPro Mono.
0: https://input.djr.com/
I was pleased to find that I chose the font I actually use.
Hilariously, I had the exact opposite. I use Fira Code, which I eliminated in the first round.
Same, or at least the closest one (Iconsolata for Consolas)
Fira Code for me.
Same. Came down to Fira Code and PT Mono. I already use Fira Code, so I probably biased to what I'm used to. I do think that Fira Code is hard to beat when it comes to ambiguous characters.
I also got Fira Code, followed by Ubuntu Mono, Source Code Pro, and Oxygen Mono.
Did the whole thing. I got IBM Plex. Actually looks great
This is my daily driver, although recently I have been enjoying Cascadia Code for something fresh.
Every time something like this comes up I always end up with JetBrains Mono.
please add TokyoNight and its variants. I can't imagine using any other theme!
I got Cuisine, I was trying to get Hack.
This is like an eye test for choosing a font, great idea!!
If only it showed fonts that I like.
I eventually had to buy one I liked, and non-free fonts won’t ever show up in sites like these.
(It’s called “Codelia” if curious.)
Roboto Mono for the win.
Is it weird that I look at most of the offered pairs and think "meh, both are ok, I guess", but do not feel any preference one way or the other?
Like, some fonts look to weird/unusual that I dislike. But most look just fine and I don't really care.
Am I weird? Do I lack taste?
It is all about the details:
- Ligatures or not
- *: in the middle (better for things like multiplication), or high (better for things like C pointers)
- Alignment of =, >, - some fonts align -, = and > to that "=>" and "->" look good, others will not, making it arguably look better in isolation, others will optimize for ligatures
- The "i" may look significantly different, some will prioritize consistency, others will prioritize making il1I look distinct. Same idea for 0/O
- Aspect ratio, do you want a wide font, making alignment, indentation, and special characters clearer, or a narrow font, allowing you to cram longer lines into a single screen.
These are compromises, and depending on your style and language, you may prefer one or the other.
No, not weird at all. I can't even imagine caring about what font one uses for programming.
I got Anonymous Pro
Same. I guess I'll have to try it.
Mine is Red Hat Mono, but really I don't like any of the presented fonts.
Serifs so I and l look different, monospace so it's possible to use spaces for alignment, and a slash or dot in the zero. What else do I need?
How do you feel about cursive? (Victor Mono on the site)
Some previous discussion including a Show HN: from the dev:
2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604781
2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010443
This was a pleasant surprise to enjoy, I was surprised to discover a font I wasn’t aware of.
Seeing all the fonts listed here it would be great to be able to add user submissions into the mix.
JetBrains Mono. Makes sense
It works -- by the end I was facing off against my two favorites. ;) I CAN'T CHOOSE.
Can we just talk about how good Source Code Pro is?
ubuntu mono, fira code
Fira Code
JetBrains Mono
That's the one i have been using for many years, look like i made the right choice
I don't need this many rounds to determine it. There should be "neither" to limit the weird fonts that will never fly.
I'm tired of colors. I wonder if I hate them all or just haven't found the perfect one.
Roboto Mono, apparently
Wow, some of these are looking atrocious. (Victor Mono, Syne Mono, Nova Mono)
What I'm missing is DejaVuSansMono which is what I'm using. The result of the test was Ubuntu Mono, which looks okay too.
It is sort of baffling that people make some of these hideous fonts, look at them, and decide to publish them regardless. A font where the lowercase i and l are indistinguishable? Okay...
I was amused that Dank Mono wasn't in the lineup (though there was one that had some of its aesthetics)
https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono
The one use case I've seen for Dank Mono was presentations with an overhead projector at conferences. The cursive for italics can make some of the structure of the code more differentiated when viewing it at a distance.