Today, I found DevFonts, a great site that allows review and comparison of various “fixed” fonts “for developers.” The quotes around “for developers” are because these fonts can be used practically anywhere, but the people who write code seem to be mostly interested in them, as that’s what they look for the biggest part of their work day.

Currently, DevFonts collects an impressive list of 36 fonts, 35 of which are free and 13 of which are supported by ligatures. If you don’t know what a ligature is, it’s an aesthetic, cosmetic enhancement that replaces multiple characters with a single visual representation, making the text more readable and visually appealing. For example, it replaces >= with ≥ (although this example here is incorrect, as I used emojis to make my point – see the screenshots for code comparison with and without ligatures).

My favorite font today is JetBrains Mono. However, I’m turning off the ligature support, which often confuses my students. But for advanced++ level students, I usually turn them on (if you wonder how the VS Code settings.json option is "editor.fontLigatures": true).

But let’s go back to DevFonts! It helps you select a favorite font. And I think I just found a new favorite: Iosevka Slab or Iosevka. The Iosevka font is more condensed horizontally, allowing me to compress more code in less horizontal space. The screenshot below demonstrates that the saved space is 8 symbols (is cool!, eight symbols long). I will probably switch to the “Slab” variant, because it seems more “fancier”, with the visual reading lines, mostly used in the Serif family fonts. However, I don’t know how it’ll go in the long term.