CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font

(codingfont.com)

81 points | by nvahalik 2 hours ago ago

49 comments

  • sodimel an hour ago

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

    • card_zero 31 minutes ago

      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.

    • nvahalik an hour 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 an hour 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 42 minutes ago

      Comic Code Ligatures for me :D

    • john_strinlai an hour ago

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

  • JasonSage an hour 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 an hour ago

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

  • KronisLV 28 minutes 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.

  • regus an hour 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 41 minutes ago

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

      • lstodd 12 minutes 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 an hour 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.

    • trinari 43 minutes ago

      now i'm curious. care to share you're settings?

      • ale a few seconds ago

        Sure. The glyph replacements match the "plain" style of SF Mono, Inter, etc.

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed] family = "Iosevka Compressed" spacing = "fixed" serifs = "sans" noCvSs = true exportGlyphNames = false

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.variants.design] one = "base-long-top-serif" two = "straight-neck-serifless" four = "closed-serifless" eight = "two-circles" zero = "dotted" capital-g = "toothless-rounded-serifless-hooked" capital-j = "serifless" capital-k = "symmetric-connected-serifless" capital-m = "flat-bottom-serifless" capital-q = "crossing" capital-w = "straight-flat-top-serifless" f = "flat-hook-serifless-crossbar-at-x-height" g = "single-storey-flat-hook-serifless" j = "flat-hook-serifed" k = "symmetric-connected-serifless" l = "serifed" t = "flat-hook-short-neck2" u = "toothed-serifless" w = "straight-flat-top-serifless" y = "straight-turn-serifless" long-s = "flat-hook-serifless" lower-eth = "straight-bar" lower-alpha = "barred" lower-delta = "flat-top" lower-iota = "serifed-flat-tailed" lower-mu = "toothed-serifless" lower-xi = "rounded" lower-tau = "flat-tailed" tilde = "low" asterisk = "penta-low" underscore = "above-baseline" caret = "low" brace = "curly" guillemet = "straight" ampersand = "closed" at = "threefold" dollar = "through" percent = "rings-continuous-slash" question = "smooth" pilcrow = "low" lig-ltgteq = "slanted" lig-neq = "slightly-slanted" lig-equal-chain = "without-notch" lig-hyphen-chain = "without-notch"

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.ligations] inherits = "dlig"

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.weights.Regular] shape = 400 menu = 400 css = 400

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.weights.Bold] shape = 700 menu = 700 css = 700

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.widths.Normal] shape = 416 menu = 5 css = "normal"

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.slopes.Upright] angle = 0 shape = "upright" menu = "upright" css = "normal"

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.slopes.Oblique] angle = 10 shape = "oblique" menu = "oblique" css = "oblique"

        [buildPlans.IosevkaCompressed.metricOverride] leading = 1050 xHeight = 530 sb = 'default_sb + 2'

  • chungy an hour 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.

  • keithxm23 an hour ago

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

  • aquir an hour 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 4 minutes 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!

  • yoyohello13 11 minutes ago

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

  • timeinput an hour ago

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

    • sneak 35 minutes ago

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

  • hrimfaxi 13 minutes ago

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

    • naikrovek 4 minutes 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.)

  • nikitadotla 43 minutes ago

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

  • croemer an hour 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.

  • embedding-shape an hour 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 26 minutes ago

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

  • delta_p_delta_x an hour 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 an hour 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.

  • genpfault an hour ago

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

    • jeffbee an hour ago

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

  • Surac an hour ago

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

  • ranger_danger an hour ago

    Fira Code for me.

  • vova_hn2 21 minutes 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?

  • varispeed 15 minutes ago

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

  • abound an hour 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

  • wang_li 32 minutes 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?

  • WhereIsTheTruth 17 minutes ago

    JetBrains Mono

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

  • cyanydeez 19 minutes 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 20 minutes ago

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

  • phplovesong 32 minutes 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.

  • nomsters an hour ago

    JetBrains Mono. Makes sense

  • ChrisArchitect 33 minutes ago

    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

  • Arn_Thor an hour ago

    Roboto Mono, apparently

  • bensyverson an hour ago

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

  • askl an hour 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 an hour 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 44 minutes 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.