This is a list of popular coding fonts. My personal favorites are marked in bold.
As for “why” … Consolas and Menlo are just super smooth. Right weight / height / spacing / proportions. You can “just work” with them and it’s never wrong. At the moment I think JetBrains Mono is just this tiny bit better, even if only for the ligatures.
Honorable mentions go to Iosevka, which is a bit strange, but very narrow so you can fit a lot in the available screen width.
The rest is not bad, I just keep circling back to one of the mentioned alternatives within minutes usually. Personal style might differ.
- Consolas – Windows proprietary.
- Menlo – Mac proprietary.
- Jetbrains Mono – brew cask:
font-jetbrains-mono - Fira Code – brew cask:
font-fira-code - Hack – brew cask:
font-hack - Monoid – brew cask:
font-monoid - Iosevka – brew cask:
font-iosevka - Inconsolata – brew cask:
font-inconsolata(broken?!) - Source Code Pro – brew cask:
font-source-code-pro