Top Programming Fonts

I love DejaVu Sans Mono:<p><a href="http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page" rel="nofollow">http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page</a><p>Which is a variant of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:<p><a href="http://www.gnome.org/fonts/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnome.org/fonts/</a><p>However, right now, my new favorite font is Menlo that came with Snow Leopard. It's another variant of Bitstream Vera and it seems to work much better at smaller font sizes. Which is great for limited screen sizes (such as 1280x800 on a smaller laptop).

If you love Incolsolata, but hate the curl of the quotes (single and double), see here: <a href="http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/" rel="nofollow">http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...</a><p>(It's posted in the comments to that article, but it may not jump out at people.)

I am a fan of Terminus. Very readable, crisp and works on both Linux and Win32 machines.<p><a href="http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/" rel="nofollow">http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/</a>

I have to add my love for Liberation Mono. <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/" rel="nofollow">https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/</a> Releases: <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liberation-fonts/" rel="nofollow">https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liberation-fonts/</a><p>I recently had one of those "time to tweak my environment" days where I spent the entire day trying out monospaced fonts (DejaVu Sans Mono, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Envy, Terminus... everything I could find) in various color schemes in multiple editors (Win). I've now pretty much set any program where I need a monospace font to Liberation Mono 10pt.<p>However, I think Consolas looks better if I'm trying to fit more onto the screen. It looks better at smaller sizes than Liberation.<p>So I've settled on using 2 editors most the time with pretty similar features (Notepad++ &#38; Programmer's Notepad), one loaded with Liberation Mono, the other with Consolas for files where I'd like to squeeze more lines in and keep decent readability.<p>Maybe there's a better way of doing things, but I like having two sorta different workspaces that I can quickly open.

The article says of Consolas: "Too bad it’s not free … if it was, it would be #1 on this list."<p>Consolas actually can be downloaded for free, legally. If you're on Windows, you can download an installer for the font directly from Microsoft at:<p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&#38;displaylang=en" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e...</a><p>If you're on a Mac, slightly more effort is required. Instructions can be found at:<p><a href="http://www.wezm.net/2009/03/install-consolas-mac-osx/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wezm.net/2009/03/install-consolas-mac-osx/</a><p>Though, actually, you don't have to use the Terminal. You can just right-click the XML File Format Converter installer, "Show Package Contents," and navigate to the font installer package.

I didn't even notice my terminal font until it being pointed out. So am I the only one perfectly happy with just Monospace?

Consolas has pretty much overtaken all the rest in most of the reviews these days. It's a great font (esp. on OS X)!

I tend to prefer Consolas to Inconsolata. Consolas' glyphs feel like they have more uniform thickness throughout.

For me, requirements for a good programming font are:<p>- Easy to distinguish 1, l, and |<p>- Zero with a slash<p>- Lowercase g open on bottom (two circles is too cluttered)<p>Surprisingly, with those simple rules the only font on the list that gets all 3 is Monaco. (My personal choice, Menlo, also gets all 3.)

Anonymous Pro... <a href="http://hivelogic.com/articles/anonymous-pro-programming-monospace-font/" rel="nofollow">http://hivelogic.com/articles/anonymous-pro-programming-mono...</a> it's the best overall.

Oh my... 22 comments and no mention of Dina. What is happening to HN lately ? :-)<p><a href="http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina" rel="nofollow">http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina</a>

This is also a good font:<p><a href="http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-coding-font-released" rel="nofollow">http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...</a>

I have been using Envy Code R. From time to time, I change my font. I guess I need some variety.<p>I have a pet project of reproducing the IBM 3270 terminal font. I love those 6's and 9's.

I like MonteCarlo: <a href="http://bok.net/MonteCarlo/" rel="nofollow">http://bok.net/MonteCarlo/</a>

I finally got around to spending a couple of hours configuring emacs 23 for the Mac. If I had fully realized that it supported native fonts now, and that Inconsolata would make me this happy, I'd have upgraded months ago.

I have used Schumacher Clean for ages, and find it awesome. Not sure it's available on Mac/Win, but it's very readable and clean (...). I mostly write LaTeX and C/C++ in Emacs on dark grey background.

Another programming font comparison:<p><a href="http://code.frostglow.com/fonts/programming-font-comparison.html" rel="nofollow">http://code.frostglow.com/fonts/programming-font-comparison....</a>

I like Lucida Grande for code with lotsa text. I didn't know about Consolas, which looks <i>great</i> for code.

Pragmata is very nice, but I tend to stick with 6x13.