The Coding Fonts I've Used Over the Years

To be honest, talking about “coding fonts” might be a bit politically incorrect, as it assumes code is always written in monospaced fonts. In reality, some people hate writing code in monospace and find it difficult to read.

All things considered, the vast majority of developers still write code using monospace fonts. In this post, I’ll share some of the monospace fonts I’ve used in recent years.

Which font you use doesn’t really matter, nor does it affect your productivity. But sometimes it’s just fun to see what another developer likes—who knows, you might discover one that suits your taste. Here are my picks, ranked in order of preference.

0. IBM Plex Mono

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Mono

1. MonoLisa (Paid)

https://www.monolisa.dev/

I haven’t studied fonts in great depth; I just thought it looked cool after reading their website, so I bought it. I haven’t run into any major issues using it so far—both my terminal and VS Code use MonoLisa. Their website features comparisons with other monospace fonts, which is worth checking out.

2. Microsoft - Cascadia Code

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code

This is an open-source monospace font created by Microsoft, and its look is noticeably different from typical monospaced fonts. If you want to switch fonts for a change of pace, give it a try.

3. JetBrains Mono

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

A monospace font created by JetBrains. It looks noticeably taller and narrower than other monospaced fonts. I used it for a while previously without any real issues, and I quite enjoyed using it inside JetBrains IDEs.

4. FiraCode

https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

For me, FiraCode is a pretty standard, no-frills monospace font. There are no real problems using it, though personally I find the spacing a bit wide.

(Image sourced from GitHub)

5. Monaco

The built-in monospace font on MacBooks.

6. Hack

https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

Another standard monospace font. It feels a bit rounder, perhaps?

That’s about it. If I come across any others I like in the future, I’ll add them here.