7 Best Programming Fonts for Streamlined Coding
Fonts are among the visual design elements with the most variety. When you’re creating a website, you can take your pick at the best Google fonts, or modern Blackletter fonts, or maybe opt for choices with pronounced elegance – and you won’t even scratch the surface of all the fonts out there. And even then, when you choose the fonts you want to add to your website, you can figure out how to combine them, change their size, and do many other things to customize your website. Best of it all, you can apply at least some of that customizability wherever you have something to type. That’s why you might be out here, looking for some programming fonts to liven up your favorite code editor.
In this list, we’ll compile some of the best programming fonts that’ll ease your eyestrain and make your work easier. You’ll find monospaced fonts on the list, as well as ones with the ligatures programmers (usually) love.
The programming fonts we’ll cover include:
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Let’s kick off the list with one of the coding world’s darlings – the Fira Code font. Designed principally by the Mozilla Foundation, this font is an extension of another font – Fira Mono. Its main feature is the coding ligatures that allow the font to display common combinations of two characters as a single one. A dash and a bigger-than sign become a rightwards arrow, for example. The change is only in how the code displays the combination, but that’s just the thing you need from this monospaced font – something to make it easier to scan code and look for errors.
Staying in the neighborhood of popular fonts coming from big-name companies, Source Code Pro is another great choice for any programming professional. This font, designed by Paul D. Hunt and belonging to Adobe’s open-source font family, was devised as a sidekick to Source Sans, retaining many of its traits but changing the key one – the width of characters. The result is a very legible font that works well in print, too. It doesn’t have the ligatures as Fira Code does, but for some programmers, this might even be a benefit and not a drawback.
Inspired by the famous Consola font, Inconsolata was designer Raph Levien’s first serious release of a font. It’s another monospaced programming font, but it has a twist that makes it stand out from the crowd. While many of the available programming fonts were designed to be seen on screen, Inconsolata was created for use in print – for printed code listing, for example. Among the top traits of this font, programmers often mention its ability to remain legible with small font sizes.
You can get Input, the font designed by David Jonathan Ross, in three different variants – Sans, Serif, and Mono. Input Mono, the monospaced version of the font, is the one that will probably appeal the most to programmers. But while the font is often praised for its legibility, the fact that it’s not open source is often cited as a con for the font. Still, if you’re looking for a font that comes with nice punctuation marks and great readability, consider giving this Adobe font a try. Keep in mind, however, that it’s only free for personal use in code editors.
Described as a “no-frills, no gimmick” typeface for coding, Hack certainly has a lot to offer to any programmer willing to give it a try. It has remarkable readability, thanks to its wide apertures, large height, and minimal stroke contrast. Hack is the product of the labor of 129 contributors, and it has more than 1,500 glyphs. For anyone willing to tinker with their fonts, Hack is a great choice because it’s free to use and modify – open source at its best.
With its wide range of glyphs that help it cover between 200 and 250 languages, the Ubuntu font is set for wide adoption. Its monospace variant, Ubuntu Mono, is a great choice for programmers who want a font with easily distinguishable characters, even at smaller font sizes – and who doesn’t want that? This font is pleasant to look at during the long hours of staring at the screen, and it’s open-source.
Designed by Christian Robertson, Roboto Mono is a monospaced member of the Roboto font family. It’s a programming font through and through – during its design process, special consideration was given to the glyphs that usually pose a problem when trying to read code. The culprits – 1, l, and I – all have distinct looks, and 0 (zero) comes with a slash, to differentiate it from O (capital letter “o”). Overall, it’s a clean-looking, beautiful font that doesn’t disappoint when it comes to bold or italics.
How to Choose a Good Programming Font
The list you’ve just read includes some pretty popular choices, and it would be hard to disagree that the best programming fonts for streamlined coding are among them. However, every person is different. One person’s favorite programming font will turn another person’s work sessions into nightmares. All of this means that, when choosing a good programming font, you should listen to your preferences.
If you’re not sure how to judge a font, here are some things that might help you out:
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Legibility should be your number one concern – letters should be easy to read, punctuation should be easily discerned.
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Tricky characters should be easy to tell apart – l, I, and 1 are the common culprits, as are O and 0.
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There should be enough space around the characters – when everything is stuffed tightly, it might be harder to notice mistakes.
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Characters should be evenly spaced – this is what monospaced fonts are about, and it’s what makes them easier to read and popular.
And don’t think that your quest for a nice working environment ends with choosing a good programming font, either. You’ll also have to find a combination of font size and contrast that works best for you, so get ready to experiment a bit. Don’t worry, though – choosing the right programming font is a decent first step.
