Simeon Says: Code in Verdana
I am working on actually posting to my blog occasionally so this is just a quick tidbit that I wanted to share. When I am helping students in the Flex class debug code there is one error that stands out above the rest. And that is switching your () for {} elements.
The easiest solution? More rigor! Nah, just switch your font so its easier to see the difference. Verdana does a great job of separating the appearance of the () and {} characters.
OK, thats it. Thats what “Simeon Says” today.
09 Oct 2007 Simeon
Interesting. I can’t fathom the idea of coding in a variable-width font, but now I’m going to have to reconsider Courier once again. I hadn’t thought of it before, but there’s got to be a font specifically designed for coding… isn’t there?
Don’t *really* use windows for anything more than gaming at this point but Consolas (which is part of the Vista font pack that was floating around way before Vista was) is a great font for coding. Very readable and very very easy on the eyes.
Probably one of the better developer fonts is Andale Mono. It was specifically built to disambiguate those tricky characters and is still mono-spaced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andale_Mono
Simeon - Thanks for bringing this topic up, it’s funny how we programmers will accept the default font without much thought.
@Mike: I just changed to Andale Mono in Eclipse on OS X and at first blush I like it, easy on the eyes. Although it does seem to render on the small side for my not exactly young eyes, had to bump up to 13pt.
I vote for Andale Mono
Thanks for the Andale Mono suggestion. I have been using Monaco for the last few months and it is now my font of choice.