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Comment by bluejekyll | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I still haven’t found a better font for reading and writing code than source code pro: https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/source-code-pro

B612 seems much more like a Helvetica derivative.

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I wish I understood why you like Source Code Pro so much. For example, in Emacs, I just switched to Source Code Pro (on "normal" or "medium" weight). With the frame maximized vertically, I could see 60 lines of text, and the letters were small and hard to read, with lots of space between lines. https://i.imgur.com/M1BFDty.png

I then switched back to Hack, at the same size. With the same frame size, I could then see 64 lines, and the letters were all larger and much, much easier to read. https://i.imgur.com/99Hi6kh.png

If I were to set Source Code Pro to a size at which the letters were the same vertical height as Hack, I'd see something like 50-55 lines of text, instead of the 64 I see with Hack.

What am I missing? Am I doing something wrong that makes Source Code Pro look bad?

You're not doing anything wrong. That's just how SCP looks. I agree it is not the best programming font and find it a bit odd to hear people saying it's the best, but that's subjectivity for you. Hack is a good one, though I still find it too vertically compressed in terms of line spacing. Input Mono Narrow is what I prefer personally. I get fewer lines per screen as a result, but hey, that's what scrolling is for. And if a chunk of code is too big, that's a cheap signal that it might benefit from refactoring.

Source Code Pro was a step down from Inconsolata that preceded it.

It's not hard to see why people want to make more infinitesimally-different fonts with their own name and a funny ampersand or (in this case) parentheses. What is never explained is why anybody else should care.

> ”Source Code Pro was a step down from Inconsolata that preceded it.”

I’m not aware of any shared history between Inconsolata and Source Code Pro. Do you know of any? On the on there hand, Inconsolata is heavily influenced by Lucas De Groot’s Consolas.

As I noted, Inconsolata existed before they began work on SCP. It is an objective improvement on Consolas, and thus worthy of attention and change.

Normally, when putting in the effort to make something new, one tries to make it better than what came before, on some axis. Introducing a new thing less good than what came before is a waste of our time and a distraction from the better things. I don't doubt that designing SCP or B612 was educational for its designers, but that is not a good enough reason to adopt it, or even to study whether to adopt it.

The new thing should be better. Why is that hard to process?

> "Introducing a new thing less good than what came before is a waste of our time and a distraction from the better things.... The new thing should be better. Why is that hard to process?"

Using "good" and "better" implies that there's some objective measurement against a common set of criteria, which is not necessarily the case from the standpoint of the designers, nor for those who choose to use the fonts and for what purpose. Better according to you? Sure, but I'd frame that as an opinion rather than objective fact.

Why should B612 be better for programming than Inconsolata, Consolas, or Source Code Pro?

For that matter, I don't think you can say that any one of those fonts is better than any other, for anyone but yourself. I find Inconsolata too narrow and cramped on the screen, compared to the wider SCP. And the cute lowercase "t" in Inconsolata is by comparison lost on me after 8 hours of coding, and I don't notice in absence in SCP.

In fact, aside from its weird glyph choices for some code points, SCR is very much like Consolas or Inconsolata of one point size up, but with a scan line removed -- e.g., SCP 9 is pixel-for-pixel a squashed Consolas 10, with trivial alterations. So it might be said to be "Consolas Squat with some weird glyphs".

I appreciate the education on typeface design, but that's not what I asked.

I wouldn't call Inconsolata an improvement on Consolas. They're certainly similar, but personally I find Consolas to be far neater. Of course, this is subjective - but that's the point; it's not an objective improvement.

Source Code Pro is a very good font. My only real problem with it is that it's a touch too wide. One of the things I really like about it is the wide range of weight and the true italic.

Note that raphlinus is … the creator of Inconsolata (https://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html)!

FWIW, I really like Source Code Pro — it's my default font everywhere. Inconsolata is nice, too, but I like the little hook on the lowercase 'l' in SCP. Also, SCP abbreviates to the name of a Unix command, which is cool

I use, to this day, Screen from SGI. Someone converted it to ttf.

Iosevka is better

This is one of those areas where personal choice will come into play, but, since you brought it up, I haven’t used it, but have looked through it:

The 0 can easily be confused with 8. I personally don’t like the serifs on the bottom of a few letters, like ’i’. And then some others like ‘v’ have an awkwardness to them.

Do you have specific reasons why you prefer it?

You can download variants with open zero or no serifs on the GitHub page. Also I think the way it is spaced is above average. I can for more text on screen with it and it is still readable, due to the letter height.

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