Berkeley Mono, Iosevka, and Cascadia Code are missing which are my favorite fonts. The game handed me Roboto Mono instead.

What I noticed while playing was that when fonts are similar, I really pay attention to the rendering of "m" and "r". When they look off, the whole font looks off to me.

It's really funny that after going through all those fonts it landed on Ubuntu Mono for me which is what I use anyways to code in my terminal.

I wonder if it's Stockholm syndrome or if I really do prefer it. It's a totally fine font, I've never felt the need to change it. All the default open source mono fonts seem completely adequate I suppose.

Knowing that everything in here is people asking why their font is missing: I highly recommend having a look at

[ MAPLE MONO ]

(on Github https://github.com/subframe7536/Maple-font). It has amazing readability, looks nice, is compatible with NF if you use that. I received compliments from people looking over my shoulder for my f'ing font?! Huge shoutout to subframe7536 ^^

While we're dropping lesser-known coding fonts, here's my favorite, Lotion [0]. It's cute and playful but also very legible and clean.

[0] https://font.nina.coffee/

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

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.

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

Yeah, a few years ago I tried the free ones, but eventually settled on Comic Code. I've been using it ever since - it's pleasant to code with. (If anyone is considering this - the "essentials" set with bold/italic is around $30. You don't need the full set.)

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

Reminds me of the original Smalltalk font.

I use comic mono myself

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

diabolical

Thanks, I hate it.

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.

If you prefer proportional fonts, here's one that pads a 1/3 of a space before uppercase letters, so it makes camelCase more legible.

https://github.com/ericfortis/verdanacamel

This is very cool.

Anecdotal solely to me, very unnerving and even with formatting marks enabled makes me feel uneasy seeing a space without a space formatting mark.

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.

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!

Nice concept. One thing font comparison tools usually miss is how well the font handles non-Latin scripts — if you're working on i18n code with mixed CJK/Cyrillic/Arabic in string literals, many popular coding fonts fall apart. JetBrains Mono and Iosevka handle this reasonably well, but most others default to system fallbacks that break the visual alignment.

Silence, clanker.

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.

The font I use, IBM Plex Mono, I chose not because I love the font, but because it's the one I love most of the fonts with CJK variants (which basically means IBM Plex, Google Noto, or Adobe Source). It's unfortunate because I really like Libertinus (a rare serif monospace font), but trying to match different non-CJK and CJK fonts that work well together is annoying.

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!

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 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...

Lately I've taken to Iosevka, the 'curly' variant to be precise. Even though I hated it when I first tried it, I revisited it because I was noticing that, with coding agents running in the same window, I wanted to be able to see more at a glance. With Iosevka's semi-width glyphs you can just fit a lot more in the same space. Took a day or two to get used to its slender appearance. Now every other font feels unnecessarily w i d e

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

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

Neat educational game. Would have liked to see Maple Mono in the line up, but I'm sure you've gotta draw the line somewhere or the game would be too tedious.

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.

I'm probably your twin, separated at birth... may you share your bitmap font?

> I don't believe in anti-aliasing for a coding font, not even on a retina display

This is a very good point. As resolution increases, antialiased fonts become less ugly, but also less necessary. Thus at no resolution they make any sense; but they look ridiculous for different reasons.

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.

Courier Prime won for me, I've always been a courier fan I guess because I wrote all my books in the 90s with it..

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

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

Nice idea, would be good to add a third option for "these look indistinguishable" (and then I guess they could be bundled together in later stages).

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!

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

It told me I should use Incosolata. I've used Consolas for as long as I can remember, so I guess they must be pretty similar.

Also, about half of these fonts look utterly unsuitable for coding to me. Nobody really needs serifs and loopy l's in a coding font, surely?

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 !

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

Thanks! A lot of fun!

I'm using Liberation Mono, and it's missing :( i got PT Mono though.

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.

I was pleased to find that I chose the font I actually use.

Hilariously, I had the exact opposite. I use Fira Code, which I eliminated in the first round.

please add TokyoNight and its variants. I can't imagine using any other theme!

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

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.

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.

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.

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/

Roboto Mono for the win.

Fira Code for me.

Same. Came down to Fira Code and PT Mono. I already use Fira Code, so I probably biased to what I'm used to. I do think that Fira Code is hard to beat when it comes to ambiguous characters.

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

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.

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

I got Cuisine, I was trying to get Hack.

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.)

I got Anonymous Pro

This was a pleasant surprise to enjoy, I was surprised to discover a font I wasn’t aware of.

Seeing all the fonts listed here it would be great to be able to add user submissions into the mix.

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.

No, not weird at all. I can't even imagine caring about what font one uses for programming.

It works -- by the end I was facing off against my two favorites. ;) I CAN'T CHOOSE.

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

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)

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

JetBrains Mono. Makes sense

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

ubuntu mono, fira code

Fira Code

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.

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.