[HN Gopher] CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font
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CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font
Author : nvahalik
Score : 278 points
Date : 2026-03-30 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.codingfont.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.codingfont.com)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Doesn't it kind of default the purpose if you can't see it in the
| actual environment you'd be using it? I know the differences are
| very minor between terminals and browsers when it comes to font
| rendering, but this seems like a tool that should be a plugin
| with the editor people are intending to use the font with, rather
| than a website.
| JasonSage wrote:
| I enjoyed this, though my font preferences are pretty stable.
|
| It would be nice if it showed you 1st, 2nd, semi-finalist,
| quarter-finalist...
|
| It would also be nice to see progress of some kind, a few minutes
| in I was wondering if I was near completion or just getting
| started.
| croemer wrote:
| It does show you on the left. Just not on the certificate.
| Izkata wrote:
| > t would also be nice to see progress of some kind
|
| It's hidden behind the menu button on mobile.
| chungy wrote:
| One nit about the site: the screen elements forced me to make my
| browser window more than half the size of my screen, and I use a
| 3840x2160 monitor. My windows are normally about 1/5 the size
| of the screen and roughly 4:3 ratio shaped. It was nearly
| unusable like that (I don't suffer issues from almost any other
| site.)
|
| On the game/bracket: it narrowed me down to Noto Sans Mono and
| I'm honestly not surprised, it's one of the few fonts that comes
| with my operating system that I find acceptable.
|
| That being said, what I actually have my terminal and Emacs set
| to is "AcPlus IBM VGA 8x16" from https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
| fonts/. I've always been fond of the VGA font and it tickles all
| the right usability marks for me.
| genpfault wrote:
| Doesn't seem to serve rendered samples so you have to set
| "browser.display.use_document_fonts" to "1" to see anything
| useful.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Which is the default, and 99.9% of Firefox users, 99.99% of all
| users will not have this issue.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I think it also requires internet access, so you have to enable
| internet.
| askl wrote:
| Wow, some of these are looking atrocious. (Victor Mono, Syne
| Mono, Nova Mono)
|
| What I'm missing is DejaVuSansMono which is what I'm using. The
| result of the test was Ubuntu Mono, which looks okay too.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is sort of baffling that people make some of these hideous
| fonts, look at them, and decide to publish them regardless. A
| font where the lowercase i and l are indistinguishable? Okay...
| shagie wrote:
| I was amused that Dank Mono wasn't in the lineup (though
| there was one that had some of its aesthetics)
|
| https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono
|
| The _one_ use case I 've seen for Dank Mono was presentations
| with an overhead projector at conferences. The cursive for
| italics can make some of the structure of the code more
| differentiated when viewing it at a distance.
| sodimel wrote:
| My coding font is comic-shanns-mono, here's how it looks:
| https://github.com/jesusmgg/comic-shanns-mono?tab=readme-ov-...
| nvahalik wrote:
| I initially used this one when I started playing around with
| Zed on a personal project, but I kept it and it has grown on me
| considerably.
| vladde wrote:
| similar situation here, but i used it because i thought it
| was funny... then kept it because it grew on me haha. had it
| for a few years, might give it a spin again
| john_strinlai wrote:
| i like that _way_ more than i would have thought simply based
| on the name.
| other_herbert wrote:
| Comic Code Ligatures for me :D
| speedgoose wrote:
| Same. It has a double-storey a, which I prefer a lot.
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, a few years ago I tried the free ones, but eventually
| settled on Comic Code. I've been using it ever since - it's
| pleasant to code with. (If anyone is considering this - the
| "essentials" set with bold/italic is around $30. You don't
| need the full set.)
| card_zero wrote:
| I was intrigued by a font called Codemonkey. This site has lots
| of classic comic fonts, including WildWords which is used in
| pretty much every manga translation.
|
| https://www.comicbookfonts.com/Code-Monkey-Variable-font-p/b...
|
| Unfortunately plus signs display as blank spaces in the test
| drive. Oh well.
| deepriverfish wrote:
| I use comic mono myself
| rjsw wrote:
| Reminds me of the original Smalltalk font.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Cream is a very distinctive font. It's perfect for Smalltalk.
| In the 1980s I remade it for the Apple II to be used in a
| game. Obviously very little text would fit on the screen it
| was used for.
| dhorthy wrote:
| diabolical
| bolp wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Got Jetbrains Mono. Not a surprise as I used this font for a long
| time and I still use it for my terminal font.
|
| But I prefer (and use) PragmataPro (not free) and it is not part
| of the test, sadly.
| abound wrote:
| Obligatory shout-out to Berkeley Mono [1], which understandably
| isn't on this site because it's a paid font. I really enjoy the
| customizer that comes with it, I use the font on all my
| terminal/IDE environments, as well as on my blog.
|
| (FWIW, I just did the codingfont bracket and got Source Code Pro,
| which I've used in the past, along with Iosevka and Commit Mono)
|
| [1] https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono
| regus wrote:
| As I get older I prefer the text on my screen to be bigger than
| usual. Most websites tend to have super small fonts for some
| reason.
|
| For coding I much prefer fonts that are bold and easier to read.
| Who actually likes these whimsical cursive looking comments or
| super thin looking fonts?
|
| I ended up with "Roboto Mono" btw.
| trinari wrote:
| uh isn't the font size kinda independant from the font style?
| lstodd wrote:
| It is, but noone serious has time for appreciating latest
| trends in web typography, so we just hit the reader mode on
| load.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Not entirely. The font "size" is the height of each
| character, not the width they take up or the stroke
| thickness. So some fonts will have narrow characters &
| display more characters horizontally than fonts with wider
| characters.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| This kind of breaks for me because I identify all the familiar
| fonts quite quickly--Consolas, Inconsolata, Iosevka, JetBrains
| Mono, Fira Mono/Code, Menlo, SF Mono, Courier...
| aquir wrote:
| For me it's Berkeley Mono...I was unable to find anything that
| comes close to it. But this games is fun and the result is a font
| that is similar to my favourite
| sevg wrote:
| Another Berkeley Mono user here!
|
| I came from Fira Code to JetBrains Mono to MonoLisa (several
| years each) then finally settled on Berkeley Mono and refuse to
| use anything else!
| TymekDev wrote:
| I have been on JetBrains Mono ever since it's release. I am
| getting FOMO from not using Berkely Mono, because it totally
| looks like something that would sit right with me.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Roboto Mono, apparently
| wendy7756 wrote:
| This is interesting. I didn't realize how much font choice
| affects readability until I switched between a few over time.
| nomsters wrote:
| JetBrains Mono. Makes sense
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Fira Code for me.
| techwizrd wrote:
| I also got Fira Code, followed by Ubuntu Mono, Source Code Pro,
| and Oxygen Mono.
| gkhartman wrote:
| Same. Came down to Fira Code and PT Mono. I already use Fira
| Code, so I probably biased to what I'm used to. I do think that
| Fira Code is hard to beat when it comes to ambiguous
| characters.
| keithxm23 wrote:
| I'd love to see a page which tracked stats for what the majority
| of users were picking
| ale wrote:
| I stopped looking for fonts after I got comfortable tweaking the
| metric settings of Iosevka. My current setup exports a set of
| really compressed cuts (more compressed than Pragmata Pro) which
| I've always found hard to come by.
| trinari wrote:
| now i'm curious. care to share you're settings?
| ale wrote:
| Sure. The glyph replacements match the "plain" style of SF
| Mono, Inter, etc.
|
| https://pastebin.com/d3RzBR6B
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| Might be interested in https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka
| which is my current go-to font.
| timeinput wrote:
| IBM Plex Mono -- I guess no one ever got fired for choosing IBM?
| sneak wrote:
| IBM Plex Mono Ultralight is a joy to look at on a high DPI
| display.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Do you mean Extralight, I can't seem to find the Ultralight.
| It's probably just my eyes getting older, but I start to
| prefer chunkier fonts and 18pt.
|
| Plex is a beautiful font, and one of the few corporate fonts
| that I actually think works, while being recognizable as
| being IBM.
| Surac wrote:
| Source Code Pro was my winner in this test. I use Iosevka on a
| regular base
| croemer wrote:
| Played it twice to see if it's reproducible. First time, Fira
| Code; second time Source Code Pro. Source Code Pro came in second
| first time round as well. Been using Fira Code until now.
| bensyverson wrote:
| Can we just talk about how good Source Code Pro is?
| nikitadotla wrote:
| Ubuntu Mono. I have been using JetBrains Mono for last 2 years
| and surprisingly I rejected it in a second iteration.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some previous discussion including a Show HN: from the dev:
|
| 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604781
|
| 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010443
| wang_li wrote:
| Serifs so I and l look different, monospace so it's possible to
| use spaces for alignment, and a slash or dot in the zero. What
| else do I need?
| Izkata wrote:
| How do you feel about cursive? (Victor Mono on the site)
| phplovesong wrote:
| Been running Berkeley Mono for years. Before that i flipped fonts
| and theme like every week. I sometimes wish you could not change
| font or color theme at all.
| doodpants wrote:
| I can sympathize; I shudder to think of how many total hours of
| my life I've spent tweaking fonts in my text editors.
|
| That said, these days I almost exclusively use Input Mono [0],
| specifically the "Narrow" variety. With an occasional
| sprinkling of either Iosevka Fixed or PragmataPro Mono.
|
| 0: https://input.djr.com/
| KronisLV wrote:
| Nowadays I use a lot of Iosevka. Previously I was on Ubuntu and
| JetBrains Mono, both are great fonts. A bit of PT Mono as well,
| even Terminus for a bit. One of my favorites has got to be
| Liberation Mono though - the most readable font I've ever found,
| even if Iosevka lets me put more stuff on screen horizontally. Oh
| also I've started enjoying Cascadia Code recently, surprisingly
| pleasant.
| craftkiller wrote:
| Yeah I was disappointed that Cascadia was not in the fonts on
| the site. What won me over for Cascadia was: I decided to try
| it for a couple weeks. By the end, I was certain that Cascadia
| must be larger than my previous font because it was so much
| easier to read, so I opened two terminals side-by-side and
| counted the rows+columns that fit between my old font and
| Cascadia. To my complete shock, Cascadia fit a couple more
| lines on my screen, indicating that it was actually _smaller_
| despite being easier to read.
| BruceEel wrote:
| Well, Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono ... - thank you!!!
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| Is it weird that I look at most of the offered pairs and think
| "meh, both are ok, I guess", but do not feel any preference one
| way or the other?
|
| Like, some fonts look to weird/unusual that I dislike. But most
| look just _fine_ and I don 't really care.
|
| Am I weird? Do I lack taste?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is all about the details:
|
| - Ligatures or not
|
| - *: in the middle (better for things like multiplication), or
| high (better for things like C pointers)
|
| - Alignment of =, >, - some fonts align -, = and > to that "=>"
| and "->" look good, others will not, making it arguably look
| better in isolation, others will optimize for ligatures
|
| - The "i" may look significantly different, some will
| prioritize consistency, others will prioritize making il1I look
| distinct. Same idea for 0/O
|
| - Aspect ratio, do you want a wide font, making alignment,
| indentation, and special characters clearer, or a narrow font,
| allowing you to cram longer lines into a single screen.
|
| These are compromises, and depending on your style and
| language, you may prefer one or the other.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No, not weird at all. I can't even imagine caring about what
| font one uses for programming.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| I'm tired of colors. I wonder if I hate them all or just haven't
| found the perfect one.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I don't need this many rounds to determine it. There should be
| "neither" to limit the weird fonts that will never fly.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| JetBrains Mono
|
| That's the one i have been using for many years, look like i made
| the right choice
| varispeed wrote:
| Mine is Red Hat Mono, but really I don't like any of the
| presented fonts.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| This is like an eye test for choosing a font, great idea!!
| naikrovek wrote:
| If only it showed fonts that I like.
|
| I eventually had to buy one I liked, and non-free fonts won't
| ever show up in sites like these.
|
| (It's called "Codelia" if curious.)
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Every time something like this comes up I always end up with
| JetBrains Mono.
| tzot wrote:
| I tried this variant of JetBrains Mono and it had the perfect
| glyph width (reportedly -6%) for my screen and window sizes:
| NRK Mono Condensed from https://github.com/N-R-K/NRK-Mono. I
| also agree with almost all of the other modifications mentioned
| in the github page under "Some notable changes are:"
|
| Now I can have side-by-side two editors plus a Structure or
| Project pane at the left in PyCharm while having 120 chars
| visible in both editors.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Surprised that I picked Oxygen Mono over Noto, but probably
| because I wasn't aware of Oxygen.
|
| Would be nice to be able to play it with my own fonts because
| some got eliminated purely because 0 (zero) looked like O
| (letter). Fira Code was a winner only because there weren't paid
| fonts that I use.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Exactly, it's not really a "coding" font if 0 is like O
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Fira Code
| mosburger wrote:
| I got Source Code Pro. My daily driver is currently 0xProto, but
| I didn't see that in the game (admittedly I think it's kinda
| rarely used).
| brandonasuncion wrote:
| I got the same result. I usually use Monaspace by GitHub.
| Interestingly, they both use texture healing.
|
| https://github.com/githubnext/monaspace/blob/main/docs/Textu...
| deepriverfish wrote:
| A few years ago I found comic mono and monofur for Powerline. I
| switch between the 2 when I get bored of one or the other. I
| decided I won't try any new fonts, it's a waste of time for me
| and I hate having too many options to choose from, not only fonts
| but basically everything else too, it's distracting. Same for my
| editor's theme, I switch between Braver's Solarized Light and
| Radical.
|
| This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my
| environment.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > This way I can focus on coding and less on tweaking my
| environment.
|
| I made myself my own pixel-perfect perfect font, more than 10
| years ago. I simply copy it from one system to the next one
| when I upgrade (either the machine or the OS).
|
| It's basically a modified pixel-perfect Terminus font, but with
| some elements mixed from an old pixel-perfect Monaco font and
| some modification of mine.
|
| Something I cannot live without is a _tall_ pipe symbol. And my
| pipe symbol _must_ have a hole in it in the middle (and it
| cannot be mistaken for an exclamation mark).
|
| I've got the following as a quick test. The reason for a,b,c,e
| is to verify that <>,{},[], etc. all perfectly align
| vertically.
|
| Everything is correct, to the pixel.
|
| I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on
| a retina display, and I love my 3840x1600 pixels 38" monitor
| and it's pixel size is perfect to me. RA
| $|-sSTtf the little fortran gqy z2Z s5S 8B CG6 DO
| uv ;; these should look different (8 / B is difficult to get
| right) a!?aA! [a] b!?b {b} c?!d
| (c) c?c <e> c!c if ( a && b
| || c & d) { [0x88, 0x42, 0xFA, 0xdeadcafebabe]; }
| *if ( a && b || c & d) { [0x88, 0x42, 0xFA, 0xdeadcafebabe]; }*
| ;; found somewhere lnt foob1x -= {(0)} "'foo'bar";
| int foOblx == ((0)) 'foo`bar`' `"': |nt f0obIx += {{o}}
| '"O08! LIl1i!!| 7?
|
| the lowercase 's' has a shorter upper bar and the lowercase 'l'
| is stylised.
|
| The thing is: I obsessed for days, creating my own pixel-
| perfect font. And I don't need to tweak it anymore: it's
| perfect (to me, YMMV) and I use it ever since.
|
| Can't share it as I reused both Terminus and chars from Monaco.
|
| FWIW I had more than 10/10 eyesight (once you get at 10, there
| are additional tests) and in my entire life I've never seen one
| person beat me at the _" read sign on the highway"_. Pixel-
| perfect font, no AA, custom made font for me. YMMV. Haters
| gonna hate.
| enriquto wrote:
| I'm probably your twin, separated at birth... may you share
| your bitmap font?
|
| > I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not
| even on a retina display
|
| This is a very good point. As resolution increases,
| antialiased fonts become less ugly, but also less necessary.
| Thus at no resolution they make any sense; but they look
| ridiculous for different reasons.
| starkparker wrote:
| I already use Inconsolata but had customized it to a point where
| I didn't recognize it here. It won anyway. Validation!
| ralferoo wrote:
| It told me I should use Incosolata. I've used Consolas for as
| long as I can remember, so I guess they must be pretty similar.
|
| Also, about half of these fonts look utterly unsuitable for
| coding to me. Nobody really needs serifs and loopy l's in a
| coding font, surely?
| akarlsten wrote:
| Cool, obviously a lot of people are going to quibble about the
| default lineup (wheres Iosevka?) but for anyone who hasn't nailed
| down a preference it seems great!
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| Iosevka might be difficult to add because it has so many
| options. Then again, that's why I use it.
| coldcity_again wrote:
| I got PT Mono in the game, but this gave me the kick I needed to
| remember about ProggyClean[1] and track it down. Used to love it
| many years ago, time to give it another spin and see if it holds
| its own.
|
| There's a vector version[2] now too!
|
| [1]: http://proggyfonts.net/
|
| [2]:
| https://github.com/bluescan/proggyfonts/tree/master/ProggyVe...
| Levitating wrote:
| I got Cuisine, I was trying to get Hack.
| grigio wrote:
| ubuntu mono, fira code
| davidpfarrell wrote:
| Because I'm lazy, and forgetful, I went back to my comment from a
| previous time this was posted:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554715
|
| Results: Roboto Mono !
| throwaway613746 wrote:
| I've been jumping between Maple Mono and a custom Iosevka build
| that I've been tweaking here and there for the better part of 3
| years. Jetbrains Mono is also really nice if you want something a
| bit more neutral.
| stared wrote:
| I like, as it is quick to decide, and you can see font names
| afterwards (some indeed looked similar).
|
| At the same time, it would be wonderful if window sizes were more
| consistent (now things are obstructed, with scrolling, etc). And
| I would love to download the ranking graph!
| diehunde wrote:
| Did the whole thing. I got IBM Plex. Actually looks great
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is my daily driver, although recently I have been enjoying
| Cascadia Code for something fresh.
| delecti wrote:
| I clicked this link with the thought "I'm curious, but I don't
| think I really have strong opinions about fonts", and was almost
| immediately proven wrong with the revulsion I felt at Xanh Mono.
|
| Though it turns out that VS Code default (Droid Sans Mono) is (to
| my eye) basically identical to my winner (Roboto Mono), so the
| exercise was mostly academic.
| beacon294 wrote:
| I had the same but I am thinking of updating to see if I can
| optimize my terminal a bit. Roboto has font weights, and
| probably has a better emoji pack, although that's just a guess
| -- maybe google doesn't tack on emojis by default.
| thetwentyone wrote:
| I wish it had my favorite in it so that I could do a blind test
| to see if it really is my favorite: https://juliamono.netlify.app
| gnarlouse wrote:
| I got Anonymous Pro
| pohl wrote:
| Same. I guess I'll have to try it.
| oneneptune wrote:
| Courier Prime won for me, I've always been a courier fan I guess
| because I wrote all my books in the 90s with it..
| dmd wrote:
| I was pleased to find that I chose the font I actually use.
| Measter wrote:
| Hilariously, I had the exact opposite. I use Fira Code, which I
| eliminated in the first round.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Same, or at least the closest one (Iconsolata for Consolas)
| sedatk wrote:
| Berkeley Mono, Iosevka, and Cascadia Code are missing which are
| my favorite fonts. The game handed me Roboto Mono instead.
|
| What I noticed while playing was that when fonts are similar, I
| really pay attention to the rendering of "m" and "r". When they
| look off, the whole font looks off to me.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| It's really funny that after going through all those fonts it
| landed on Ubuntu Mono for me which is what I use anyways to
| code in my terminal.
|
| I wonder if it's Stockholm syndrome or if I really do prefer
| it. It's a totally fine font, I've never felt the need to
| change it. All the default open source mono fonts seem
| completely adequate I suppose.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Berkeley Mono was the first time I bought a font.
|
| It's so good. Perfect even. And they have a really neat
| customization tool.
|
| I've been using it for a few years now and they actually still
| occasionally release a new version of it. Haven't gotten tired
| of it yet.
|
| The only complaint I have about it is that I had to do a hacky
| workaround to get my Nix setups to pull it in since it's
| proprietary.
|
| I even forked their "Machine Report" tool (which presumes
| Debian) to make it work on Linux/NixOS by applying a
| "polyfill": https://github.com/pmarreck/usgc-machine-report-
| nixos-editio...
| fortyseven wrote:
| It works -- by the end I was facing off against my two favorites.
| ;) I CAN'T CHOOSE.
| krunck wrote:
| Roboto Mono for the win.
| vindex10 wrote:
| Thanks! A lot of fun!
|
| I'm using Liberation Mono, and it's missing :( i got PT Mono
| though.
| j45 wrote:
| This was a pleasant surprise to enjoy, I was surprised to
| discover a font I wasn't aware of.
|
| Seeing all the fonts listed here it would be great to be able to
| add user submissions into the mix.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Nice idea, would be good to add a third option for "these look
| indistinguishable" (and then I guess they could be bundled
| together in later stages).
| airstrike wrote:
| please add TokyoNight and its variants. I can't imagine using any
| other theme!
| lemontheme wrote:
| Lately I've taken to Iosevka, the 'curly' variant to be precise.
| Even though I hated it when I first tried it, I revisited it
| because I was noticing that, with coding agents running in the
| same window, I wanted to be able to see more at a glance. With
| Iosevka's semi-width glyphs you can just fit a lot more in the
| same space. Took a day or two to get used to its slender
| appearance. Now every other font feels unnecessarily w i d e
| torgeros wrote:
| Knowing that everything in here is people asking why their font
| is missing: I highly recommend having a look at
|
| [ MAPLE MONO ]
|
| (on Github https://github.com/subframe7536/Maple-font). It has
| amazing readability, looks nice, is compatible with NF if you use
| that. I received compliments from people looking over my shoulder
| for my f'ing font?! Huge shoutout to subframe7536 ^^
| ksymph wrote:
| While we're dropping lesser-known coding fonts, here's my
| favorite, Lotion [0]. It's cute and playful but also very
| legible and clean.
|
| [0] https://font.nina.coffee/
| pmarreck wrote:
| This one has a bit of... an Art Deco flavor, perhaps, is it?
| theSuda wrote:
| First Maple and now this. Today is good day for trying new
| fonts.
| chris_st wrote:
| Seconding Maple Mono - it's very nice.
| amanzi wrote:
| I've been a long time Fira Code user, but recently switched to
| Maple - I love it. Mostly because of the "single storey" `a`,
| but that's just a personal preference of mine.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Italics turn into cursive... I cannot imagine ever wanting this
| in my IDE, but that's just me.
| antisol wrote:
| I know right?! And apparently only certain letters become
| cursive in italic, so it's not even consistent about it?!
|
| This seems bizarre to me, I do not understand the rationale
| behind it. Can someone enlighten me?
| kccqzy wrote:
| I don't like it. It looks amateurish in the same way Comic Sans
| looks to me. I suppose you'd love this if you also enjoy Comic
| Sans.
| maxloh wrote:
| It feels more like Consolas to me.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Consolas at least looks like a serious type face. This one
| has letterforms so rounded that it screams playful without
| any seriousness.
| Bootvis wrote:
| > Nice
|
| < Look at the tasteful colouring. The tasteful thickness of it.
| Oh my God.
| aktenlage wrote:
| Woa, that's a weird @ in the screenshot in line 6.
| antisol wrote:
| I had to look very hard at the line to recognise it as an @
| because it's so weird.
| dotancohen wrote:
| What do you like about it? I like that the I and l are
| distinctive, and of course the distinction between 0 and O.
| However, there are some nice letter differentiators that it is
| missing, such as a shorter middle cane in the letter "m"
| (Ubuntu Mono has this for example).
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| The slant and connective distance of the cursive italic l are
| noticeably different than of the other letters, so every word
| that includes one is very jarring.
|
| It looks like they naively aligned the slant of the leftmost
| edge at the mid-height of the glyph, which is not the right way
| to optically align shapes, especially for a symbol with
| asymmetric curvature (the leading face of the loop leans
| substantially more than the trailing face). And then in
| addition to that, a too-wide arrangement with adjoined letters
| causes excess dead space around them.
|
| You see this quite strongly in the "null" that appears on line
| 5 in their example screenshot. The two "l"s both appear to lean
| more than the "nu", and the "ul" has more internal space than
| the "nu", and the "ll" has even more than that.
| theSuda wrote:
| Checked it out and instantly liked it. Been using Cascadia Code
| for years. Will give this one a try now. Thank you!
| gkhartman wrote:
| Neat educational game. Would have liked to see Maple Mono in the
| line up, but I'm sure you've gotta draw the line somewhere or the
| game would be too tedious.
| tmtvl wrote:
| The font I use, IBM Plex Mono, I chose not because I love the
| font, but because it's the one I love most of the fonts with CJK
| variants (which basically means IBM Plex, Google Noto, or Adobe
| Source). It's unfortunate because I really like Libertinus (a
| rare serif monospace font), but trying to match different non-CJK
| and CJK fonts that work well together is annoying.
| efortis wrote:
| If you prefer proportional fonts, here's one that pads a 1/3 of a
| space before uppercase letters, so it makes camelCase more
| legible.
|
| https://github.com/ericfortis/verdanacamel
| oneneptune wrote:
| This is very cool.
|
| Anecdotal solely to me, very unnerving and even with formatting
| marks enabled makes me feel uneasy seeing a space without a
| space formatting mark.
| efortis wrote:
| yep, sometimes I switch to mono before sharing my screen
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Oh this is really cool, I did it and I landed on the font I've
| been using for years now: "Fira Code".
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Fun. Interestingly the one that "won" for me isn't the one I
| normally use, which was one of the candidates, but I have used it
| a lot in the past.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Going through this, I was introduced to <= being converted to a
| ligature which immediately ruled it as a nope for me. No monkey
| business with the characters of my code thank you very much.
| pmarreck wrote:
| That is usually configurable at the terminal level- for
| example, both wezterm and ghostty have available configs to
| control this behavior.
| jwilliams wrote:
| Good to know. I've been using ghostty and generally not a fan
| of the code ligatures (or just too stubborn to adapt!).
| r_lee wrote:
| I'm not either. I think it may look "cool" visually but
| when trying to work with code with those in it, it seems
| odd, like that it's a single character even though it's not
| and it just breaks the flow
| pmxi wrote:
| I didn't like them either. Thankfully, they can easily be
| disabled. See my config: https://github.com/pmxi/dotfiles/b
| lob/e779c5921fbe308fad0c95...
| mcookly wrote:
| > That is usually configurable at the terminal level
|
| And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the _buffer_
| level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=`
| and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major
| modes, avoiding any confusion.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el
| pietervdvn wrote:
| I don't like them as well. On this site, you can disable them
| with the checkbox on the top-right
| iNic wrote:
| I like most ligatures, I wish I could selectively turn off just
| this one.
| dotancohen wrote:
| This is also the first time I've noticed that some fonts have
| the center cane of the lower-case "m" shorter than the other
| canes. I love that!
|
| Interestingly, Ubuntu Mono was the font I landed on - which is
| already the font that I use. At least I'm consistent.
| flkiwi wrote:
| It's ... weirdly validating that what I ended up with is what I
| actually use (Source Code Pro).
| quibono wrote:
| Nothing comes close to Iosevka for me, after using it for a while
| it's hard to find the same mix of narrow+readable.
| manbitesdog wrote:
| That's very nice and I ended up with the same font I tend to use
| (Source Code Pro) vs the font I used before (Noto Sans Mono).
| Some features I'd love to see:
|
| - An ELO-based version with many more variables, so that I can
| open the site from time to time and find more nice fonts
|
| - Some global stats
|
| - Not losing the leaderboard after reloading
|
| - Spline Sans Mono
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Something I never liked about this game is its showing it in your
| browser at your chosen font size.
|
| Chrome (assuming you're using Chrome) draws it a specific way.
| This does not match how Freetype (using typical tuning) or
| DirectWrite draws it. Chrome's choices in font renderer tuning
| and blending makes it kind of split the difference between
| Windows-style and OSX-style, and isn't native to either.
|
| What it should be doing is showing you lossless screenshots of
| actual in-app renders at different sizes. Some in Chrome (to
| represent the Electron apps), some in DirectWrite, some in OSX
| post-Retina, etc.
|
| Some fonts look _amazing_ at larger sizes, but are unreadable at
| smaller ones. Some perform _exceptionally_ well at smaller sizes.
| Some look great on every font renderer but OSX 's, but some only
| look right on OSX and look bad everywhere else.
|
| I've sorta played this game with myself, in a semi-objective way:
| take a bunch of fonts, ignore the subjective art nature of them,
| and throw them at a bunch of common renderers and see what the
| optimal size is, and then sort by smallest legible size.
|
| If we define Fira Code, the most popular code font out there, as
| the bare minimum, 8 of the ones I tested beat it, while 17 were
| worse.
|
| https://github.com/Diablo-D3/dotfiles/blob/master/fontsizes....
| bool3max wrote:
| Totally agree, the same fonts at the same pixel sizes often
| look massively different in different environments. I -love-
| macOS' native font rendering, but have been unsuccessfull in
| emulating it on Linux :/
| adityamwagh wrote:
| My favourite one is Iosevka Extended.
| tasuki wrote:
| There are some good choices, but also some atrocious ones. My
| favourite coding font[0] is missing.
|
| [0]: https://www.recursive.design/ and also available on Google
| Fonts[1]
|
| [1]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Recursive
| eahm wrote:
| I always end up with Consolas, Ubuntu Sans Mono and Hack.
| foresto wrote:
| Neat.
|
| I wish the sample text included _underscores_, since I have
| occasionally found that they disappear with certain combinations
| of font + size + renderer.
|
| And a run of all the numeric digits 0123456789, to show how their
| heights align.
|
| And [square brackets], to show how easily they are distinguished
| from certain other glyphs.
|
| And the vertical | bar, for the same reason.
|
| ...
|
| Adobe Source Code Pro and Ubuntu Mono were my finalists. I think
| my preference would come down to window and font size, since
| Ubuntu Mono seemed to be narrower and leave more space between
| lines.
|
| (Also, I kind of rushed the first few comparisons, so it's
| possible that I prematurely eliminated a typeface that I would
| have liked more.)
| rbanffy wrote:
| Sadly, IBM 3270 is missing from the lot. How can I write
| professional looking code that lasts a lifetime in anything less?
|
| I also remember some nice ones designed to look like a smoothed
| VT-220 one.
| dlvhdr wrote:
| No Commit Mono :( The GOAT - https://commitmono.com/
| cafebabbe wrote:
| Aaah, Ubuntu Mono, i found you, you little rascal
| joch wrote:
| Missing my favorite, Iosevka: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
|
| Playing the game gave me Jetbrains Mono though.
| johng wrote:
| This is also my favorite. Though there are many different
| versions of Iosevka now.
| proxycon wrote:
| another comment about favourite font missing: departure mono
| journal wrote:
| am i the only one who sticks to defaults, mostly?
| __fst__ wrote:
| For me it was a close finish between Fira Code and RedHat Mono. I
| mostly look out for
|
| * no <= or === ligatures (i still like to see the separate
| characters)
|
| * 'i' vs 'l' vs '1' (I now mostly prefer fonts where the
| lowercase 'l' has the righthand bend on the bottom)
|
| * dotted zero vs slashed zero (i prefer the slashed zero, but
| dotted is fine as well)
| amiga386 wrote:
| It's rigged; Consolas isn't even a contender in this game, and
| the example text has no lowercase italic 'k's, which are its best
| glyph.
| VorpalWay wrote:
| Terminus TTF[1] is my favorite monospace font. The key thing for
| me is that it is actually a bitmap font, which means it is sharp
| and crisp. I get headaches from most types of anti-aliasing on
| traditional low DPI monitors. The colour bleed from subpixel AA
| is awful, but even most grey scale AA (except when using full
| hinting as well) is just so blurry.
|
| Unfortunately they seem to have missed it on this page.
|
| [1]: https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/
| jjcm wrote:
| I want to see the stats for this - which one gets chosen the
| most?
| nilslindemann wrote:
| 1. What does "choose" choose?
|
| 2. What does "press arrow" do?
|
| 3. Do "choose" and "press arrow" do the same or do they do
| different things?
| antisol wrote:
| This is cool!
|
| Suggestion: I'd like to have an option to exclude fonts without
| ligatures from the game. And it seems there are others who don't
| like ligatures who would probably like to be able to exclude
| fonts with ligatures. You could also do this for other features
| like serifs.
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