111–120 of 246 posts
(Oblique and italic are both slanted styles of font; the difference is that a true italic has some cursive features and an oblique does not.)
> Picking a programming font is like picking a religion. No matter what you pick someone will say you're wrong. Most people will agree at least that monospaced fonts are ideal for reading code and that both of you who use proportionally spaces fonts are destined for hell, or at the very least, purgatory. I guess I'm destined for hell or purgatory then. Hanselman is not alone. I had the CEO of one company look over my…
Why did you format the code snippets in your comment in a monospace font? Also, I'm curious. I want to see how the code looks like. I want to know what are the downsides of monospace and the benefits of proportional. The one you cited isn't too much of a deal, since it is just a habit you can create using monospace still.
Because I don't know of a way to get HN to format text in a proportional font without losing the line breaks. Believe me, I've tried. :-)
> Also, I'm curious. I want to see how the code looks like.
I am glad you are curious about it!
> I want to know what are the downsides of monospace and the benefits of proportional. The one you cited isn't too much of a deal, since it is just a habit you can create using monospace still.
Indeed, and now that you mention it, I'm not entirely sure which happened first. I may have switched to the second style with indentation instead of column alignment before I started using a proportional font, just because I was tired of the excessive line lengths and always having to fiddle with the spaces.
Regarding the downsides and benefits, will it sound like a cop-out if I say it's just something you have to try for yourself?
Part of my preference for proportional fonts isn't even tied to any rational reasons. I spend much of my day looking at code, and I just find proportional fonts easier to read, more beautiful and pleasant to look at. But beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.
> Picking a programming font is like picking a religion. No matter what you pick someone will say you're wrong. Most people will agree at least that monospaced fonts are ideal for reading code and that both of you who use proportionally spaces fonts are destined for hell, or at the very least, purgatory. I guess I'm destined for hell or purgatory then. Hanselman is not alone. I had the CEO of one company look over my…
var calculatedOne = andthisCalculatedOne(anArgumentThatMeansSomething,
anotherWordyName);
myFunctionThatDoesStuff(someArgument, calculatedOne);
tags instead of this indentation nonsense.The extra vertical space is easily worth the increase in readability IMO.
I've never touched proportional formatted code beyond a day or two when I was forced to by my environment, and all I encountered was more annoyances in getting my code to align properly. I'm glad you found some benefit, but I'd argue those benefits could be achieved any number of other ways.
> Picking a programming font is like picking a religion. No matter what you pick someone will say you're wrong. Most people will agree at least that monospaced fonts are ideal for reading code and that both of you who use proportionally spaces fonts are destined for hell, or at the very least, purgatory. I guess I'm destined for hell or purgatory then. Hanselman is not alone. I had the CEO of one company look over my…
Why did you format the code snippets in your comment in a monospace font? Also, I'm curious. I want to see how the code looks like. I want to know what are the downsides of monospace and the benefits of proportional. The one you cited isn't too much of a deal, since it is just a habit you can create using monospace still.
Can you have a ligature that displays a warning when you mix tabs and spaces? Because that would actually be useful.
This is a deeply personal choice, I feel. I am not a fan of using ligatures in programming code as it gives some abiguity around how many characters are in a given ligature. To each his/her own, I guess.
Look at the "!=" ligature in the Fira Code example: it's a ≠, but it clearly takes up 2em of width.
I'm mystified how any one finds these more readable. Form over function if you ask me.
It transforms them from individual characters being put together to approximate symbols into the actual symbols. The act of joining together particular character combinations into more aesthetically pleasing forms is common and very old practice. It looks odd only because we're accustomed to seeing the individual characters due to display limitations inherited from typewriters and TTY machines.
Yep, the ampersand symbol "&" originated as a ligature for et, Latin for "and". You can see this more obviously in italic families and some fonts expose a more fancier variant as well. Example: http://i.imgur.com/Rsmmql9.jpg.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you format the code snippets in your comment in a monospace font? Also, I'm curious. I want to see how the code looks like. I want to know what are the downsides of monospace and the benefits of proportional. The one you cited isn't too much of a deal, since it is just a habit you can create using monospace still.
> Why did you format the code snippets in your comment in a monospace font? Because I don't know of a way to get HN to format text in a proportional font without losing the line breaks. Believe me, I've tried. :-) > Also, I'm curious. I want to see how the code looks like. I am glad you are curious about it! > I want to know what are the downsides of monospace and the benefits of proportional. The one you cited isn't…
