Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's C notation. Other languages use other notations like ~= or /= or . And any conceptual overloading of ≠ is a tiny fraction of the problem with = (it's too bad ASCII'67 dropped the ASCII'63 ← in favor of _).
The != notation has become pretty standard in most common programming languages. What exceptions are there in the top 20 development languages? VBA? But, taking your point, a ligature ≠ would be overloaded in representing != and ~= and /= and and becomes potentially very risky.
Dev Fonts
241–250 of 342 posts
Re: Dev Fonts
#242Re: Dev Fonts
#243I switched to coding in a proportional font, Verdana, a couple of years ago and never looked back. That's the font you are reading this comment in, in fact. Code is mostly words and words are much easier to read in a proportional font. Symbols are plenty clear enough in Verdana, all letters are distinguishable, and I don't use mid-line alignment so I don't see the point in a monospace font outside of the terminal.
> That's the font you are reading this comment in, in fact. Wrong. One of my favorite features of Firefox is that I get to choose whether websites can override my fonts. And they can't. Serifed Georgia is default, Ariel if they request sans-serif, and Consolas for monospace.
Re: Dev Fonts
#244Am 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
#245Re: Dev Fonts
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, however, I like to see exactly what it is I am typing, exactly which symbols are being used. Ligatures distort that. I feel the same way. I do think I would enjoy programming in a language that used a slightly more extended set of real characters, as long as we had solid editor and font support so typing and viewing them wasn’t going to be an issue for anyone. For example, I’d like to finally have ≠, ≤ an…
I feel the same way. Ligatures in coding fonts are a poor workaround for bad keyboard layouts. If you want to see ≠ then type ≠. Julia is the only ‘major’ language I know that supports most such characters.
Re: Dev Fonts
#247My 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…
I agree with the author on adding ligatures where they are not needed, but one of the comments used in their justification is not quite right: > Unicode [...] identifies each character uniquely. This way, software programs don’t have to worry that things like the fi ligature might be stashed in some special place in the font. Instead, Unicode designates a unique name and number for each character, known as a code poi…
Re: Dev Fonts
#248My 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…
i can't find any pictures of triplicate with a dark background. could you share any? some hefty fonts (ie, go mono, courier) look so different when you change backgrounds that i am hesitant to buy without looking at a sample. TIA
Re: Dev Fonts
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes use a triple negation !!! for that reason. I don‘t know if there are any drawbacks, especially if there are other people working on the code, but it worked pretty well for me so far.
That might work until there's somebody who uses double negation !! for some reason. But this might only be common in JavaScript, so YMMV.
Apparently it's a way to negate and convert to boolean.
Re: Dev Fonts
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Gotta also keep in mind the FE landscape has radically shifted in the last 5-6 years after being almost dormant for a long while - more or less coinciding with ES2015 and the emergence of reactive frameworks ala React/Angular/Vue.