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Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alignment probably more than anything, though obviously the necessity for that depends on the language and style.

Alignment of what?? Not left edges. Even in non-monospace fonts, every blank is the same with, same with every tab.

Consider aligned colons, something like

  {
    a  : 10,
    ab : 40
  }
If space and "b" are not the same width, that won't look great in a proportional font.

Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#63

Cosmic Sans Neue Mono Note there's an S in Cosmic :) https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

Thanks, that's one snazzy programming font. I'm definitely giving it a try. Edit: it's nice at small sizes. They should have made a hairline variant though, for larger sizes, as it's pretty bold and the characters aren't as distinct as the could be. Think I'll keep using it for a while longer and see how it goes

Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#64
post #49
post #15

Ubuntu Mono https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Ubuntu+Mono I like it a lot. Here an example of Sublime Text 3 + Ubuntu Mono 10pt + Blackboard Theme: http://imgur.com/qW8yyi0

I use Ubuntu Mono 14pt in iTerm2 and kinda like using a font that big ! http://imgur.com/7Bdtuge

What triangle character are you using there in your prompt? Sorry, but I haven't found a way to make it 'stick' to the background before it using any font (at least at 14pt).

Edit: OK, I found the character/theme you are using, but what version of Ubuntu Mono do you have? It won't handle that for me :/

Edit 2: I found a Powerline patched version, but that doesn't seem to work either… Maybe I will just switch back to Consolas

Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#65

Geneva. I don't understand why programmers use monospace fonts, other than some kind of tradition.

Because I work with data pretty often, and working with data pretty much requires a monospace font, and there's no reason for me to switch back and forth.

For example, cli mysql wouldn't be too much fun in Geneva. There's a nice visual hint between labels and data in lines of whois output, and that hint would be icky in a proportional typeface:

    status:      reallocated
    owner:       NETLINE PERU
    ownerid:     PE-NEPE4-LACNIC
Also, log files with columns like timestamp [ip] etc., and some particularly friendly configuration files.

And, although it's not very common, I occasionally use it as a typo-checker. If I have a function or a class where I can't easily abstract out some kind of repetition, then using a monospaced font with variables that are the same number of characters lets me visually see right away if I've mistyped something. I couldn't quickly find an example, but it was the first programming-specific monospace font thing that came to mind.

Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#67
post #28

I am hugely anal about this topic and I've tried all fonts mentioned at the time of this post. In the end, Consolas has racked up the most miles during my coding and Proggy Tiny for the output console (allows you to fit quite a lot). Don't get me started on color theme.

> Proggy Tiny for the input console

I would humbly suggest trying either MonteCarlo [1] or its derivative, Tamsyn [2]. Certain characters (like the "@" symbol) look much better in either of these fonts.

[1] http://www.bok.net/MonteCarlo/ [2] http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn-font/

Re: Ask HN: What programming font do you use?

#69
post #41
post #20

Fira Sans Mono. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/products/firefox-os... (not displayed, but the download includes a Mono variant)

Fira Mono is really beautiful, but the problem I have with it is the vertical spacing. The lines are so far apart, almost nothing fits in the screen.

One's joy, the others pain. I like that ;).
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