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.
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.
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
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 3840×2160 monitor. My windows are normally about ⅕ 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.
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.
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.
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)
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...
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.
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.
- *: 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.
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...
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.
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
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.
My coding font is comic-shanns-mono, here's how it looks: https://github.com/jesusmgg/comic-shanns-mono?tab=readme-ov-...
diabolical
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.
Reminds me of the original Smalltalk font.
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.
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
Comic Code Ligatures for me :D
Same. It has a double-storey a, which I prefer a lot.
I use comic mono myself
i like that way more than i would have thought simply based on the name.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
It does show you on the left. Just not on the certificate.
> t would also be nice to see progress of some kind
It's hidden behind the menu button on mobile.
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...
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 !
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
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!
Did the whole thing. I got IBM Plex. Actually looks great
This is my daily driver, although recently I have been enjoying Cascadia Code for something fresh.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
uh isn't the font size kinda independant from the font style?
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.
It is, but noone serious has time for appreciating latest trends in web typography, so we just hit the reader mode on load.
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.
now i'm curious. care to share you're settings?
Sure. The glyph replacements match the "plain" style of SF Mono, Inter, etc.
https://pastebin.com/d3RzBR6B
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).
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...
I'd love to see a page which tracked stats for what the majority of users were picking
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.
Exactly, it's not really a "coding" font if 0 is like O
I already use Inconsolata but had customized it to a point where I didn't recognize it here. It won anyway. Validation!
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 3840×2160 monitor. My windows are normally about ⅕ 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.
IBM Plex Mono -- I guess no one ever got fired for choosing IBM?
IBM Plex Mono Ultralight is a joy to look at on a high DPI display.
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.
Source Code Pro was my winner in this test. I use Iosevka on a regular base
I got Cuisine, I was trying to get Hack.
Ubuntu Mono. I have been using JetBrains Mono for last 2 years and surprisingly I rejected it in a second iteration.
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.
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.
Well, Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono ... - thank you!!!
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
Every time something like this comes up I always end up with JetBrains Mono.
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...
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.
Doesn't seem to serve rendered samples so you have to set "browser.display.use_document_fonts" to "1" to see anything useful.
I think it also requires internet access, so you have to enable internet.
Which is the default, and 99.9% of Firefox users, 99.99% of all users will not have this issue.
This is like an eye test for choosing a font, great idea!!
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.)
ubuntu mono, fira code
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.
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/
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?
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.
Fira Code for me.
I also got Fira Code, followed by Ubuntu Mono, Source Code Pro, and Oxygen Mono.
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?
How do you feel about cursive? (Victor Mono on the site)
Fira Code
Can we just talk about how good Source Code Pro is?
JetBrains Mono. Makes sense
Roboto Mono, apparently
Mine is Red Hat Mono, but really I don't like any of the presented fonts.
JetBrains Mono
That's the one i have been using for many years, look like i made the right choice
I don't need this many rounds to determine it. There should be "neither" to limit the weird fonts that will never fly.
I'm tired of colors. I wonder if I hate them all or just haven't found the perfect one.
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
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.
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...
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.