13 Best Fonts for Programmers

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If you are a programmer, then you spend all day sitting in front of your computer. This is something that can really start to hurt your eyes, which is a problem because you need to be able to focus on your lines of code, or else your programs just aren’t going to work properly.

Moreover, if you don’t use the right kind of font, you’re just not going to be able to see your lines of code clearly, and that’s obviously a problem. Something that many people might not think about is that using the right kind of font for programming is very important.

Using the right kind of font can make a big difference on many different fronts. Therefore, today we are going to talk about the best font for programmers. We have a variety of fonts for you to look at and we have a quick description of each of them, just to let you know exactly why it is a good option to consider.

However, before we start listing off the best fonts for programmers, we do want to take a quick look at exactly why font matters for programming. Let’s get started.

Why Font Matters for Programming

You are probably wondering why we are here talking about fonts. Well, the fact of the matter is that when you are coding, you have to deal with millions and millions of characters. If you make one mistake, you have to go back through it all and identify what went wrong.

If you aren’t using the right font, identifying mistakes or characters in general can be extremely difficult. When it comes down to it, if you have a font that is very clear and easy to read, with characters being distinguished from one another very well, it helps to reduce eye strain and eye fatigue.

It can also help reduce the occurrence of headaches. At the same time, it also makes it much easier to find what you are looking for, therefore helping you save a whole lot of time. At the end of the day, although many people don’t think about it, the font that you use for programming is actually very important.

The Best Fonts for Programming

Right now, we want to go through a list of the very best fonts that you can use for programming. Let’s take a look.

Proggy

If you are doing a lot of C and C++ coding, then this is a great type of font to use. The reason for this is because it has a very effective yet simple look that is easy to read. It has generic features, such as differentiated letters, additional optimization, slash zero, and vertically centered acts the risks, plus it even has access aligned arithmetic operators.

What is cool is that this font comes in many different variations, including over 12 different bitmap versions as well as a vector version. Depending on which version you use, it can change the way how certain characters are displayed.

Fira Code

The main defining feature of this monospaced font is that combines frequently used multi simple sequences into a single sequence, therefore reducing the amount of time it takes for you to scan over the code. This makes it much easier to find exactly what you are looking for.

What is really cool is that this doesn’t change what any of the actual characters themselves look like, so it’s not going to impact your code at all. Instead, it is going to make everything a whole lot easier to read. You might also like how there are many different variations of various characters, so you can adjust exactly what this font looks like to make it work best for your purposes.

Source Code Pro

Here we have another super monospaced font that is made specifically for user interfaces. This particular type of font has a dot to zero, modified letters, optimized symbols, and much more.

Keep in mind that this is an open source font available from Adobe, and it is a part of the Source Sans family. This might be a very simple looking font, but it works really well.

DejaVu Sans Mono

One of the defining features of this particular font is that it is designed to cover the full Unicode character set. This goal hasn’t been reached quite yet, but the coverage that has been achieved so far is much better than with most other fonts out there.

What is really cool is that this particular font is very monospaced, therefore making it suitable for programming and development. The characters are very well distinguished, so it makes this font very easy to read. Moreover, this is an open source and free font, so it’s very popular. It even comes bundled with many popular operating systems, plus you might already have it on your computer.

Terminus

Here we have another font that is designed for people who work in programming, coding, and on computers in general. In fact, it is designed for people working more than eight hours per day. It’s specifically designed to be very easy to install, to scan, and to read.

Generally speaking, it’s going to hurt your eyes and cause fatigue much less than other fonts out there. There are plenty of developers, programmers, and coders who have been using this font for well over 10 years now, and continue to do so, mainly because it is so comfortable to read.

If you have problem with bitmap fonts, try out terminus TFF. All in all, this might just be one of the very best fonts to use for programming.

Dina

Yet another awesome font to use for programming is Dina. The reason why this font is so ideal is because it has a very clean design and this makes your code very easy to read.

In fact, code is so easy to read, that finding individual characters is much easier than with most other fonts out there. This is also a font that is known for not causing headaches, at least not for a very long time. If you are having trouble reading it, there is also a bold version available. If you don’t like this version, then there is also an original bitmap version that you can download for free.

Hack

Hack is one of the best coding fonts out there, especially because it has plenty of practical features, such as italic, bold, and a combination of the two. It also comes complete with power line support, as well as characters that were carefully designed to be very easy to read. This prevents you from having to squint to see those characters.

Moreover, not only is this font very easy to read but it’s also known for preventing headaches. Something else that you might appreciate is that this is a very multilingual programming font, as it has over 1500 different glyphs, so it should work well for most languages.

Input

Yet another font that is ideal for coding is known as Input. This is a very flexible font that comes complete in many different styles and it looks good in most situations. If you keep running into various issues with regular bitmap fonts, check out this one.

What’s really cool is that there are over 160 different styles, so you can swap out various characters for different symbols that work better for you. You can also adjust the spacing in between lines. All in all, this is a font that is super easy to read and therefore ideal for programming and coding.

JetBrains Mono

If you are doing a lot of coding and programming, and you need to read a whole lot of long lines of code, then this is another font that you definitely want to check out.

Here we have a font that comes complete with over 140 different code alligators, support for over 145 different languages, and more. The really cool thing is that it’s also an open source font, one that can be used by any commercial or personal entity.

Cascadia Code

Yet another big font for programmers to consider is Cascadia code. It comes complete with a default, a cursive font, and italic font, and a mono font, plus there is also additional support for embedding power line symbols.

Although this font is known for laboratories, both stylistic and functional, you also have the option to get a package that does not include these. What is pretty funny here is that some coders actually really hate this font, whereas other people really like it. Either way, this is an open source font, so you should be able to easily access it.

Monolisa

OK, so here we have a font that you will actually have to pay for. If you don’t like monospaced fonts because they are causing fatigue and eye strain, then this is a good one to check out. It does follow those regular monospaced standards, but it also has a much more pleasing look. It is designed for easy reading, features support for over 200 different languages, has several ligatures, and includes power line symbols. It also comes with a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out for yourself.

Anonymous Pro

This font has actually been around since the mid-1990s, with Macintosh having developed a bitmap font for its own purposes. However, this has now been remastered, especially in terms of the typefaces, and it is now specifically designed for programmers. The fixed width typefaces are very useful.

Dank Mono

This is yet another font that is ideal for programmers, and yes, it is a paid one. One thing to consider here is that plenty of displays out there are fairly large, with most coding fonts being designed for smaller screens. However, this is an exception, as it works really well for big screens with high resolution.

It’s definitely not a traditional bitmap monospaced font, but it performs a great job and looks really good too. This is a very popular font that has received popular feedback. There is both a commercial license and a personal license available.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different types of fonts out there that are ideal for programming. Some are easier to read than others, but it really depends on what your personal preferences are.

If you need a font that is easy to read, that allows you to easily distinguish between characters, and easily allows you to find exactly what you are looking for within your code, and any of the ones discussed above are ideal.

Just do some trial and error to see which one of these fonts works best for you, and then get to programming.

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