Best Font Choice For Your Programming IDE

Font choice can make a huge difference in ease of programming. Easily knowing the differences betweens "1"s and "I"s, "0"s and "o"s can help lesson both mistakes and eye strain. Sometimes my choice is based on monitor. I use to love the Anonyomous font; however with my current screen, it looks strained somehow. I'm currently test driving Consolas Regular.

There is no perfect choice, but there are some general rules that I think should be tested for every font used to develop with.

Clear easy to read & not too compressed
Differentiated characters, ie: 1,I & 0,O
Monospaced / fixed widths (not everyone agrees with this)

Some of my recomendations:

Proggy Clean (12px)
Anonymous (10-11px)
Consolas Regular (11px) - Might come with MS Office
Andale-Mono

There are multiple multiple options for fonts, so if you've got something... I'm always looking for something better. If you've never tried to change your IDE font, you should. You might find your headachs to be a little bit less at the end of the day!

Comments

Russ Johnson wrote on 03/10/09 3:36 PM

I remember back in the day. I used to use comic sans bold in CFStudio. I picked it up at a CF class that Steve Drucker was teaching at Fig Leaf Software. It stuck for so long, now I cant stand it!

I find myself always using Manaco these days, sometimes Andale-Mono.

Daniel Sellers wrote on 03/10/09 3:37 PM

I use Consolas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas at 11pt. Easy to see the difference between the 1lI0O. A little bit darker then some of the other monospaced fonts but suits my needs.

Comes with a couple of different Microsoft products.

Justin Carter wrote on 03/10/09 4:31 PM

Consolas is great, it comes with both Vista and Office 2007, though you can also get it by downloading PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (for Windows) or the Open XML file converter (Mac) :) I use Consolas at 10pt though (on Windows) because for some reason at 11pt some of the letters seem to be oddly shaped compared to 10pt or 12pt :P

Darth Sidious wrote on 03/10/09 4:52 PM

Now and then when I get a break from electrocuting people and blowing up rebel outposts I get a chance to do some hands-on coding and definitely give a thumbs up to Consolas - not only is it a great font, but it's designed by a fellow Sith Lord.

Btw what's up with the captcha - you really think a Rebel Spammer will try to defeat a 6 character captcha? I think 2 is fine.

Dan G. Switzer, II wrote on 03/10/09 5:05 PM

I've been using Dina forever:
http://blog.pengoworks.com/index.cfm/2006/11/9/Dina-Programming-Font

I've been able to use it at 8pt at 1152x864 for a long time and find it very readable.

All characters are easily distinquishable and it's more compact than the other font's I've tried (several of which were already mentioned.)

Russell Brown wrote on 03/10/09 6:51 PM

@Darth Sidious: It's funny you mention that, today alone I deleted at least 12 spam posts...

6 is the default of the plugin I'm using.... 4 might be a little more realistic and more user friendly... I'll make the adjustment...

Tony Fendall wrote on 03/10/09 10:28 PM

I have been having trouble with a dramatic increase in spam posts on my blog too. I don't both with a captcha any more, because it turns out that most of the spammers were humans and not bots @.@

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