Ask HN: What programming font do you use and why?

I use anonymous pro: http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html

Admittedly, I use it because it's pretty. Hence why I started a question to find out more about what makes a good programming font.

Consolas at 10pt.

Any sans-serif monospaced font with good 'eye' and 'el' / 'zero' and 'oh' distinction.

- Microsoft's Consolas is generally quite good on Windows

- Bitstream Vera Sans Mono on Linux

- Whatever OS X comes with by default (yaay, no need to change anything)

are all good.

I just read this article: http://nickgravgaard.com/cgi-bin/elastictabstopsnews/blosxom...

He compares proportional fonts with monospaced fonts for programming, and after looking at his screenshots I think I'm going to have to try it for myself.

I love CodingFontTobi (http://www.proggyfonts.com/). It's all over my system (Visual Studio, vim, cmd/cygwin etc).

Monaco at 11pt

on windows

Droid Sans Mono at 11pt with a dotted 0:

http://www.cosmix.org/software/

Here's a pretty nice list of programming fonts.

http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts/

I like DejaVu sans and Monaco

schumacher clean. fixed width. easy to read. and the "a" looks like an "a" should.

eclipse default because I don't particularly care

For code and console I love pixel fonts, so: Terminal 6px (included with all Windows) Envy Code A 7px http://damieng.com/creative/typography/envy-code-a

I can't stand blurry fonts for code (especially since, at small sizes, text looks a blotch of blur). So, if I want small fonts (such as 6pixels by 8pixels) it better be pixel crystal clear hand tweaked. A font can do anti-aliasing or LCD based sub-pixeling, but that is more towards book reading / open office, than coding.

I use Proggy Clean (Slashed Zero) 12pt from: http://www.proggyfonts.com/

Emacs23 XFT default. They're very pretty as it is imho.

TextMate is currently set to Inconsolata at 15pt. Comparing screenshots of that vs. Monaco 13, it looks like the anti-aliasing adds a lot of bulk to the characters in Monaco -- Inconsolata's characters seem a little clearer to me.

But thanks for the link, seegate -- maybe I'll try a proportional font for a few days and see what I think. (=

DejaVu Sans Mono for me. It looks great and it's freely available for all platforms I use.

I recently started using Inconsolata which looks fantastic at both large and small sizes http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html and also made the "Top 10 Programming Fonts" list here : http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts

Since 1993 it's been Lucida Sans Typewriter or Lucida Console; I've not found anything better to my eyes, although I'll check out this discussion.

The only issues I've found with this font family are that the differences between l and 1 and . and , can be subtle.