CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font

123 pointsposted 3 hours ago
by nvahalik
(codingfont.com)

75 Comments

stared

3 minutes ago

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

2 minutes ago

Did the whole thing. I got IBM Plex. Actually looks great

akarlsten

19 minutes ago

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!

sodimel

2 hours ago

My coding font is comic-shanns-mono, here's how it looks: https://github.com/jesusmgg/comic-shanns-mono?tab=readme-ov-...

rjsw

an hour ago

Reminds me of the original Smalltalk font.

nvahalik

2 hours ago

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

2 hours ago

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

other_herbert

2 hours ago

Comic Code Ligatures for me :D

speedgoose

44 minutes ago

Same. It has a double-storey a, which I prefer a lot.

john_strinlai

2 hours ago

i like that way more than i would have thought simply based on the name.

KronisLV

an hour ago

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.

JasonSage

2 hours ago

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

2 hours ago

It does show you on the left. Just not on the certificate.

Izkata

41 minutes ago

> t would also be nice to see progress of some kind

It's hidden behind the menu button on mobile.

deepriverfish

an hour ago

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

34 minutes ago

> 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.

aquir

2 hours ago

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

an hour ago

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!

regus

2 hours ago

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

2 hours ago

uh isn't the font size kinda independant from the font style?

SAI_Peregrinus

13 minutes ago

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.

lstodd

an hour ago

It is, but noone serious has time for appreciating latest trends in web typography, so we just hit the reader mode on load.

ale

2 hours ago

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.

keithxm23

2 hours ago

I'd love to see a page which tracked stats for what the majority of users were picking

0x457

an hour ago

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

an hour ago

Exactly, it's not really a "coding" font if 0 is like O

starkparker

31 minutes ago

I already use Inconsolata but had customized it to a point where I didn't recognize it here. It won anyway. Validation!

chungy

2 hours ago

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.

timeinput

2 hours ago

IBM Plex Mono -- I guess no one ever got fired for choosing IBM?

sneak

an hour ago

IBM Plex Mono Ultralight is a joy to look at on a high DPI display.

mrweasel

an hour ago

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.

Levitating

15 minutes ago

I got Cuisine, I was trying to get Hack.

Surac

2 hours ago

Source Code Pro was my winner in this test. I use Iosevka on a regular base

nikitadotla

2 hours ago

Ubuntu Mono. I have been using JetBrains Mono for last 2 years and surprisingly I rejected it in a second iteration.

embedding-shape

2 hours ago

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.

BruceEel

an hour ago

Well, Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono ... - thank you!!!

croemer

2 hours ago

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.

abound

2 hours ago

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

grigio

15 minutes ago

ubuntu mono, fira code

yoyohello13

an hour ago

Every time something like this comes up I always end up with JetBrains Mono.

delta_p_delta_x

2 hours ago

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...

stephc_int13

2 hours ago

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.

hrimfaxi

an hour ago

This is like an eye test for choosing a font, great idea!!

naikrovek

an hour ago

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.)

genpfault

2 hours ago

Doesn't seem to serve rendered samples so you have to set "browser.display.use_document_fonts" to "1" to see anything useful.

speedgoose

42 minutes ago

I think it also requires internet access, so you have to enable internet.

jeffbee

2 hours ago

Which is the default, and 99.9% of Firefox users, 99.99% of all users will not have this issue.

phplovesong

an hour ago

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

23 minutes ago

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/

vova_hn2

an hour ago

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

28 minutes ago

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.

ranger_danger

2 hours ago

Fira Code for me.

techwizrd

16 minutes ago

I also got Fira Code, followed by Ubuntu Mono, Source Code Pro, and Oxygen Mono.

wang_li

an hour ago

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

39 minutes ago

How do you feel about cursive? (Victor Mono on the site)

bensyverson

2 hours ago

Can we just talk about how good Source Code Pro is?

nomsters

2 hours ago

JetBrains Mono. Makes sense

Arn_Thor

2 hours ago

Roboto Mono, apparently

varispeed

an hour ago

Mine is Red Hat Mono, but really I don't like any of the presented fonts.

WhereIsTheTruth

an hour ago

JetBrains Mono

That's the one i have been using for many years, look like i made the right choice

cyanydeez

an hour ago

I don't need this many rounds to determine it. There should be "neither" to limit the weird fonts that will never fly.

0xdeadbeefbabe

an hour ago

I'm tired of colors. I wonder if I hate them all or just haven't found the perfect one.

askl

2 hours ago

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

2 hours ago

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

2 hours ago

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.