this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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I... Somehow just realized that I can of course change my editor font. After three years in professional software dev.
Any recommendations for maximizing readability?
Comic mono
I unironically love comic sans derivatives, they're just super readable to me
Comic sans can help a lot of people with dyslexia.
Comic sans is a great typeface in my opinion. Just often misused.
Comic sans was invented for legibility on CRT screens, and its considered good for younger people to learn the iconography of various Latin characters.
Its just misused since it was standard in Windows and Apple's OS X, and used in situations that aren't meant for such a typeface. It's perfectly good for what it was invented for, its just often incorrectly used by designers who don't really know how to design well.
https://www.codingfont.com/ is a fun, tournament style quiz that compares different monospace fonts. It's far from comprehensive, but I found it useful to gauge what font features I find stylish and readable
(For the record, my go-to font is Jetbrains Mono)
That was fun. Apparently I'm a JetBrains Mono user. Of course it might be simply what I'm used to, because I'm a long time IntelliJ user. It wouldn't surprise me if this is already my font.
I got Fira Code, which tracks, I've used it before. I use Comic Code though. (A monospace comic sans type font.)
My go-to has been Fira Code for some time. Just did the test, and Fira Code was the winner. Jetbrains Mono was a close second for me though.
Thanks, I got inconsolata. I'm not a coder but I'm going to use it for other things.
Lol I got Fira Code which is what I actually use. Awesome tool
I guess it depends on your preference but I love Fira Code
I use it as well
Is there any other font that has that variety of ligatures?
Try JetBrains Mono.
Verdana.
The I/l and O/o/0, 0/8/ø are all distinct, so are all the different kinds of brackets. Also, this isn't a monospace font, so wide letters such as m and w are wide, instead of being squashed into an unreadable barcode.
Letters aren't meant to be monospace, and sans TUI nothing in computers still needs to be.
If you do need one, ex. for TUI, I second JetBrains Mono!
Also, Verdana is not a libre font, Noto Sans is a libre font that also has these properties, although code does look much better in Verdana to me.
Oh no.
You wouldn’t want mono space in languages where indentation matters?
Nope, indentation is still the same.
For example eight spaces are going to be twice as big as four spaces in just about any font, and Verdana still accodomodates well to this with its wide spaces.
Big fan of jetbrains mono.
Fira Code is my go-to.
I'm a big fan of GoHuFont
My favorite is "Inconsolata"
Me too! I don't code but I really like it.
I've really enjoyed Monaspace as well as using Inter for my interfaces. Maybe you will too? :)
I picked up a great little test along the way: type the word ill or illegal followed by 100, using a capital I in illegal and mixing an upper case O and a zero in the number.
Ill10O
Can you clearly tell all these characters apart in your editor font?
I am all about Fira Code, myself
It's a bit vanilla but I like DejaVu Sans Mono 8pt in my terminal, which is where I edit scripts and things
Curiously, I don't think that looks quite as good at larger sizes, so I've been using Liberation Mono 9pt or 10pt elsewhere.
Both of those have distinct glyphs for the usual easily confused candidates. Can't be having my lowercase L's and 1s looking similar.
Look up a good article on coding fonts and pick your camp! At the moment I have DejaVu installed but I'm not a purist. As long as it's properly designed for this I'm happy. Ligatures are particularly nifty in some languages but no big deal. I recall one author picking a font so that the italics would be cursive rather than monospace, so that his comments would look like handwritten notes in the margin, but I never got a chance to try it myself. Looked great though!
Iosevka, IBM Plex, Fira Code, Space Mono, JetBrains Mono
i always use the classic 6x13 or 8x16 font
I just use IBM Plex, but that's mostly because the keycaps my keyboard came with used it :) I also think it's just fine for readability (i.e. I/l and O/0 are different enough)