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Comment by _mghw | Hacker News Reader

Do you like it?

One of the things that really gets in the way of comprehension for me are typefaces with too much personality. These cutesy italics etc. really seem to affect my ability to get on with the job at hand.

This is why, despite trying, I've yet to find something that can outdo Consolas on Windows. I tried Fira this and that, Source code pro and a bunch of others from Google Fonts. They all are inferior to Consolas in my eyes. They'll either be missing the slotted '0', or look crowded in small sizes etc.

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I found it terrible, not only because of the surplus personality, but due to aesthetic and readability issues.

Readability - the r looks to me closer to an i, not the i of this font but a generic i, I find it confusing and it slows me down.

Aesthetically - the f character have space before it that in many combinations cuts a word to two, for example in the word delightful. Generally the font is mono-spaced, but the space between and after characters varies a lot.

I found it terribly incomplete. $40 and it can’t cover all four standard weights: regular, bold, italic, and bold italic. I believe it was last one, bold italic, that it was missing and the website is careful to obscure that fact.

And the ridiculous of those italics glyphs. Like, who decided that the f and l should have huge decorative slings but not the g?

Do I like Dank Mono? I am indifferent to it. It hasn't sold me on switching from Source Code Pro.

It's better than a lot of other fonts I've seen on programmingfonts.org so far. But just because a font is good or on par with my current one doesn't mean I'll use it. Force of habit is a big factor.

The guy from PracticalTypography also recommends Source Code Pro as his free monospaced font of choice.

Ubuntu Mono is the only one that rivals Consolas, imho. I used Monaco for the longest time but keep coming back to one of these two

I use Monaco for coding and Ubuntu Mono for my terminals, for years. Best combo so far although Agave does look nice.

Microsoft has another font called Cascadia which I think is their attempt to improve Fira Code.

I've moved to it recently and is my new favorite. Mainly because my eyes are getting old so I don't need it to look good at 7 pt since I couldn't see it anyway. And I like thicker fonts like this.

My one complaint is the tilde.

Have you tried Ubuntu Mono? It's not as thick but is quite readable. Also their bold variant might satisfy you if the regular doesn't. DejaVu Mono is also quite adequate.

Too much of the cursive can damage readability, but if it's constrained, then it actually helps a lot. I use Dank Mono and write primarily in JS. I use the cursive for things like `let` and `const`, which helps them stand out. It's a very nice typeface, well worth the money.

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