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Programming Fonts – Test Drive

app.programmingfonts.org

31–40 of 289 posts

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#31

It looks like these are all monospaced fonts. I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional fonts that are suitable for programming. Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-DPI displays I use, and it h…

I'm curious to know how you started using proportional fonts for coding. All of the tooling for writing code defaults to monospace, so what started you coding in a different style?

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#32
post #7

Awesome, am loving this one with colors on http://app.programmingfonts.org/#press-start-2p It would be nice to have some flags to show what the license is for each one.

http://programmingfonts.org/list contains licensing information for each font, but I agree that it would be nice to see on the Test Drive page as well.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#34

It looks like these are all monospaced fonts. I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional fonts that are suitable for programming. Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-DPI displays I use, and it h…

Verdana used to be my go to proportional font when I was doing Java. Helped with long variable names and long horizontal lines. My buddies thought I was nuts, but I found it very legible. These days my eyes are dimming, so I dislike skinny fonts. Now I use DejaVu Sans Mono in _bold_ exclusively. Every now and then when HN does a programming font post, I try out different ones, but I always end up going back to DejaVu…

Like you, I'm not as young as I used to be. So I'm with you on the skinny fonts! One of my biggest pet peeves is web designers who think font-weight: 300; is a good idea.

You might take a look at Trebuchet MS. One thing I like about it is that the strokes are nice and fat. At least on my high-DPI displays; haven't checked on a low or medium DPI display.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#35

My favourite for a few years now is a commercial font, Triplicate. It’s a true serif monospace font; every other monospace font I’ve encountered that is labelled “serif” is actually a slab serif. It has a proper italic face as well, which is a less rare, but it’s a functional italic face rather than ornamental. It comes with some interesting variants, most notably Poly which is not fully monospaced, adjusting the wid…

It looks quite similar to golang font: https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts

It has serifs and true italics. Might be an interesting free alternative.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#37

My favourite for a few years now is a commercial font, Triplicate. It’s a true serif monospace font; every other monospace font I’ve encountered that is labelled “serif” is actually a slab serif. It has a proper italic face as well, which is a less rare, but it’s a functional italic face rather than ornamental. It comes with some interesting variants, most notably Poly which is not fully monospaced, adjusting the wid…

It looks quite similar to golang font: https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts It has serifs and true italics. Might be an interesting free alternative.

Go Mono has the slab-style serifs that chrismorgan was referring to.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#38

It looks like these are all monospaced fonts. I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional fonts that are suitable for programming. Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-DPI displays I use, and it h…

Curious. How do you line things up?

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#39

It looks like these are all monospaced fonts. I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional fonts that are suitable for programming. Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-DPI displays I use, and it h…

Verdana used to be my go to proportional font when I was doing Java. Helped with long variable names and long horizontal lines. My buddies thought I was nuts, but I found it very legible. These days my eyes are dimming, so I dislike skinny fonts. Now I use DejaVu Sans Mono in _bold_ exclusively. Every now and then when HN does a programming font post, I try out different ones, but I always end up going back to DejaVu…

+1 for Verdana. Been using it for 3 years now. Couldn't be happier.
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