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Dev Fonts

devfonts.gafi.dev

151–160 of 342 posts

Re: Dev Fonts

#151
post #56

My favourite monospaced font is Triplicate https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html >: the only true serif monospace that I know of (though I have a vague feeling I found one other at some point). Every other serif monospace I know of is a slab serif. Triplicate’s variable stroke thickness is also exceedingly rare in monospaced fonts; almost everyone goes for uniform stroke thickness, as is customary with sans…

There's a free monospace serif-looking font called Go (made for Go, the programming language), designed by Bigelow & Holmes: https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts

Unfortunately it isn't using a usual font license. It's not really clear under what conditions you can use/redistribute it.

Re: Dev Fonts

#152
Posting the Matthew Butterick's definite ''ligatures are bad'' take, in case anyone is interested.

Q: Ligatures in programming fonts? A: Hell no https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/q-ligatures-in-pro...

> And not because I’m a purist or a grump. (Some days, but not today.) Programming code has special semantic considerations. Ligatures in programming fonts are likely to either misrepresent the meaning of the code, or cause miscues among readers. So in the end, even if they’re cute, the risk of error isn’t worth it.

Re: Dev Fonts

#153
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a look at Fire Code. How do you distinguish -> with ligatures from → (an Unicode arrow)?

The ligaturized -> is two characters wide and is pretty easy to tell apart.

So it looks like U+27F6 ⟶ rather than U+2192 →?

Re: Dev Fonts

#154

Am I the only one who uses a proportional font for coding? I find it more readable for the same reason it's more readable in books and other printed media.

Which one do you use? I love proportional font but find most of them not suitable for code. Input Serif is the only proportional programming font I can find but it looks too old school.

Re: Dev Fonts

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think they do, I'd rather change syntax highlighting to recognize !== and others as a single token . Your syntax highlighter probably already recognizes single tokens as single tokens. > It's like multi-select in text editors. When you think about it, it's actually an inferior form of search&replace. I’m thinking about it, and it isn’t. Sometimes search and replace is an inferior form of multiselect. Multise…

Some HN users love to look down on front-end development as if it's some sub-par category of developers, for some reason. Let's do the same kind of pretentious generalization - I'd wager they are the same who think any language of higher level of abstraction than than C++ is an utter waste of time. Edit: did I hit a nerve? I don't even believe that second statement, but it's a good example of how pretentious that com…

Sure, some do. I can't speak for them. What annoys me personally is that sometimes they seem to praise very arbitrary stylistic choices as objectively superior. I think front-end developers are more prone to fashions than other kinds of developers. The blogs seem to go through phases.

Re: Dev Fonts

#156

Posting the Matthew Butterick's definite ''ligatures are bad'' take, in case anyone is interested. Q: Ligatures in programming fonts? A: Hell no https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/q-ligatures-in-pro... > And not because I’m a purist or a grump. (Some days, but not today.) Programming code has special semantic considerations. Ligatures in programming fonts are likely to either misrepresent the meaning of the co…

> Bottom line: this isn’t a matter of taste

Bottom line: this is a matter of taste, like syntax highlighting, use of bold/italic/font face, because everyone configures its own editor to their own taste.

Re: Dev Fonts

#157
post #4

Very nice! I tend to use tiny sized font and I don't see any option to change font size. I'm always surprised by the huge default font size in text editors and IDEs. So I ask: Is there such a "standard" dev font size every dev uses and no one complains?

Hey Narann, I assume you are in your early 20s. During the early part of my career, I used to love to design and develop with very tiny fonts. In-fact, there were a time when there was a craze for Bitmap pixel fonts which looks the best at 8px. I used to build apps for Physicians who uses a hand-held device called Pocket PC[1]. My weapon of choice when it comes to fonts were these 8px bitmap fonts for the interfaces.…

> I learned my lessons and made the fonts bigger. Designs do not look so nice (at-least to me and my team) but they loved my work.

That sent me down a nostalgia trail to this[1] book which has similar advice for Pocket PC developers. Drag the buttons and other form controls onto your program, then at least double their size, to make them go from stylus-required to semi-finger-friendly. Implement some custom code to drag empty screen to scroll, avoid the SIP where possible, wow, lots of memories making UX better for mobile users in the pre-always-connected-mobile-device days.

We're still here working, even if the form factor has retreated to serving delivery drivers and warehouse workers more than the general public. Pocket PCs / Windows Mobile 6.5+ embedded devices are a (often barcode-scanner-enabled) tool to get work done, data input, or data referenced in the field, with no VPN or internet access in several cases.

[1] https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781590590959

Re: Dev Fonts

#158

I've tried most of these at some point over the past few years and eventually settled on JetBrains Mono. I love it. The story about how it was created is pretty interesting... https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ And yes, there's a powerline version. (Not affiliated with JetBrains in any way)

I've never seen a font's design explained so well. There's so many subliminal things that I had never thought about/considered.

While not as in depth... the Source Code Pro announcement page touched on some of those - http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/

Re: Dev Fonts

#160

My favourite monospaced font is Triplicate https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html >: the only true serif monospace that I know of (though I have a vague feeling I found one other at some point). Every other serif monospace I know of is a slab serif. Triplicate’s variable stroke thickness is also exceedingly rare in monospaced fonts; almost everyone goes for uniform stroke thickness, as is customary with sans…

Triplicate has a nice look, but l (lowercase L) and 1 (one) are indistinguishable, which is an immediate non-starter for me in a programming font. (CORRECTION: there is apparently a code version that disambiguates these and others. See comments. That means this probably would be a candidate font for me, except:)

I finally just paid for Pragmata Pro, and haven't regretted it. The unicode support is incomparable, and for someone who lives in emacs and console, support for things like the Powerline glyphs and the option to use Emacs' prettify-symbols mode means an awesome user experience.

I actually like ligatures when reading code, less so when writing. The thing I like about prettify-symbols and a font like pragmata pro is that I can toggle between strict representation and a cleaned up version with things like the below replacements:

  (defun aja/pretty-symbol-push-default ()
    (push '("!="      . ?≠) prettify-symbols-alist)
    (push '("="      . ?≥) prettify-symbols-alist)
    (push '("=>"      . ?⇒) prettify-symbols-alist)
    (push '("->"      . ?→) prettify-symbols-alist)
    (push '("lambda"  . ?λ)prettify-symbols-alist))
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