Improve your coding with 25 hyper legible fonts for programmers

Wdd Logo.
February 20, 2014
Improve your coding with 25 hyper legible fonts for programmers.

thumbnailThe pinnacle of web development is hand-coding. No other approach delivers the same bespoke quality, performance and all round job-well-done-ness as rolling up your sleeves and digging into source code.

As a result, most of us spend all day everyday staring at markup, style sheets, and assorted server-side code. Despite this most of us leave our applications with their default settings. But with a simple change of font, scanning our code becomes far simpler.

Selecting an appropriate font for coding is a unique task, in that the only audience you have to consider is yourself. The only thing that counts is what works for you.

The challenge is that coding is unlike most written formats; whilst most text has fairly regular line lengths, even when set ragged, the nature of our programming languages means that line lengths vary from a single character up to many hundreds per line; you need to select a font that is easily scannable with distinct individual letters.

You also need to ensure that your font has a full complement of mathematical symbols, brackets and punctuation; any font that covers basic latin is usually enough.

Finally, you need to ensure that the characters are sufficiently distinct at a small point size. Common problems are distinguishing the number 1’ from the lowercase l’ and the uppercase O’ from the number 0.

The most common choices are monospaced fonts, as they create predictable line lengths and are traditionally used in technical data. However, the only rule is that you select a font that works for you. Pick the right one and your coding will be faster, easier to read back and less error prone.

Ubuntu Mono (free)

ubuntu

Century Schoolbook Monospaced ($24.75)

century

Droid Sans Pro Regular ($79)

droid

Consolas ($35)

consolas

Trim Mono Light ($54 approx.)

trim

Average Mono (free)

average

Excaliber Monospace (free)

excaliber

Briem Mono ($50 approx.)

briem

Blackbox Mono Superset ($149)

blackbox

Kettler Regular ($39)

kettler

Nimbus Monospace ($19.95)

nimbus

Pica 10 Pitch ($34 approx.)

pica

Prestige Elite Regular ($40 approx.)

prestige

ITC Souvenir Mono Light ($48 approx.)

souvenir

Typewriter Elite Regular ($29)

typewriter

Typiqal Mono ($29)

typiqal

Monospace Typewriter (free)

monospace

Isonorm Monospaced Regular ($54 approx.)

isonorm

Hermit (donation)

hermit

Inconsolata (free)

inconsolata

Deja Vu Sans Mono (free)

dejavu

Elronet Monospace (free)

elronet

Dina (free — Windows only)

dina

Profont (free)

profont

Monofur (free)

monofur

What font do you use for coding? Do different fonts work better for different programming languages? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/​thumbnail, programming image via Shutterstock.

WDD Staff

WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there’s something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.

Read Next

Are Simple Websites Better For Business?

As web design technologies raise the bar on what it is possible to achieve on a realistic budget, there’s a rising deba…

Apple Opts for AR over VR at WWDC

An Apple VR headset has been one of the most widely-rumored devices of the last few years, and it was finally settled a…

Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2023

We’re halfway through 2023 already, and the number of incredible apps, tools, and resources for designers is mounting.

3 Essential Design Trends, June 2023

This month we are focusing on three trends within a bigger website design trend – different navigation menu styles and …

15 Best New Fonts, May 2023

The choices you make when selecting a typeface have more impact on your design than almost any other decision, so it’s …

10+ Best Tools & Resources for Web Designers and Agencies (2023 updated)

Having the ability to envision a tastefully designed website (i.e., the role creativity plays) is important. But being …

20 Best New Websites, May 2023

This month, there are tons of great new agency websites to get excited about. 3D animated prisms are a popular theme, a…

How to Find the Right White Label Website Builder for Your Agency

Web design agencies face a lot of obstacles in closing the deal with new clients. One of the most common ones is the ar…

Exciting New Tools For Designers, May 2023

There are hundreds of new tools for designers and developers released each month. We sift through them all to bring you…

3 Essential Design Trends, May 2023

All three of the website design trends here mimic something bigger going on in the tech space, from a desire to have mo…

10 Best AI Tools for Web Designers (2023)

It’s time to stop worrying if AI is going to take your job and instead start using AI to expand the services you can of…

10 Best Marketing Agency Websites (Examples, Inspo, and Templates!)

Marketers are skilled in developing strategies, producing visual assets, writing text with high impact, and optimizing …