I've been using a comic sans based mono font now since the last time I saw it on HN (about a year ago based on my receipt). I use a paid version called Comic Code [1]
I find it very easy to read as well as fun. I had similar feelings about using Monaco in the past. I find it personally makes programming easier on the eyes and enjoyable.
I remember reading the font is similar to the letters that are taught in kindergarten which is a theory of why it's easy on the eyes.
If you look at screenshot #5, the text is the same size as the text the page is written in, yet looks very different. No slab serifs on 'r' or 'n', and a less quirky 'y' and 'k'. So now I don't know if the page is written in the font it's talking about, or some other font. Confusing.
According to my browsers dev-tools the text on the page is Dossier[0], which happens to be a font by the same author. I admit I also first thought that it would be set in the font its trying to demonstrate.
Yeah, it's different enough to avoid triggering my Comic Sans allergy, but OTOH at least Comic Sans has a clear purpose (comic-style lettering), while this sits in the middle between Comic Sans and a "typewriter-like" font (Courier), and I somehow can't imagine a typewriter with this font...
Another Comic Code user here, although I only bought it because I didn't know about these free alternatives which look just as good. It seriously reduces eyestrain and makes me more efficient. First thing I install on any new computer!
Comic Code does look significantly better than Comic Mono (which wasn't created by a professional) in my opinion. Just compare i and l (lower case L), for example.
> I remember reading the font is similar to the letters that are taught in kindergarten which is a theory of why it's easy on the eyes.
I know some people find it easier to read, but that explanation does not seem right to me. For one thing are kids not taught to read using printed materials? I taught my kids to read using whole words - flash cards and then "look and say" books and those did not use fonts anything like this.
I personally find it hard to read and it slows me down slightly. I wonder whether some people benefit from being slowed down? Maybe making their eye movements more deliberate or efficient?
I believe they mean similar to the fonts when you're learning the alphabet, not when you're learning to read. Like those books where you trace "A" ten times then "a" 10 times then "B" and so on.
I really like his Codelia font; but I just can't justify spending that much on a font when there's so many free alternatives. Wish the was a cheaper non-commercial license.
$15.50 for something you use every moment of your working life?
It's not that much.
It's fine to use free versions instead, but maybe let's stop asking for freebies from folks who make their living that way, especially from Indy folks. (Badger your average megacorp for free stuff for all you want, they'll find ways to extract money somehow)
You need at the very least 4 of those $15.50 fonts to cover italic and bold.
If I could get the entire font family for $30 or so I would consider it despite all the free alternatives, but $150 is just way too much if you are making a non-US salary.
There is a “Comic Code Coding Essentials“ bundle for $30, licensed for up to 5 users. Unfortunately, it’s at the very bottom of the page so it’s easy to miss.
I suppose I'm the last person alive to just use plain text. So, yes, sorry for that omission.
The full collection is $100. At average European salaries, that's (at worst) half a day of work. Not unnoticeable, but if you care about your tools, not an amount that's entirely unreasonable. The coding family is, as you say, $30 - 90 minutes of work.
Beyond US, Europe, and other affluent countries, yes, it gets somewhat unaffordable. I don't have a good answer here. But I don't think asking indy folks to fix global inequality is the right answer, either. They need to live too.
Some choose to release their fonts for free (Monaspace, Comic Mono, Inconsolata...), but that's a choice they made for themselves. They ultimately decided it was affordable for them to do that. And that's great!
But I really have a problem with complaining about people who are trying to make a living, demanding they give away their work. One because it's somewhat entitled ("I deserve to get your work for free"), and two because it's a large part of what discourages indy work. Something our industry sorely needs.
>$15.50 for something you use every moment of your working life?
$16 to upgrade my life? well worth it. $16 to own something that I'd need to carry around for the rest of my life in a file, or track a download code for, and configure into every new system I boot up, and... nah, that's buying a responsibility
creatives out there: you are using and benefitting from the free open source internet where other creatives gave away their work product free. Stop trying to monetize your tiny contributions.
One similarity it has with fonts specifically designed to counter dyslexia is that every character looks different. The handwritten look introduces more cues for the reader to pick up on than a more precise font.
I first saw this when I was on a screen sharing session with a client, and couldn't help but ask – is that... is that comic sans?
Turns out he was also using Comic Code, and he basically had the same feelings as you towards it. I thought what the heck why not, and gave it a go. Now I'm hooked as well, for the very same reasons.
Coding, somehow, is just more fun and enjoyable now. Moreover, it's probably one of the more legible fonts I've ever used. Didn't expect that!
1. Gratuitous overuse often in inappropriate places (bad news from work, invitation to a funeral, etc.)
2. The fact that it was optimised in its hinting for low resolution screens common around the time of its creation (and its initial target, via MS Bob) making it not optimal for higher resolutions (in print, or on more modern higher resolution screens with or without sub-pixel rendering). If you are going to use that sort of font, I think there are better choices than Comic Sans itself (unless CS has had updates over the years, which, come to think of it, is not unlikely).
If you really want to wind up people who care too much about what fonts you use, try combining the two most overuses and disliked with Comic Papyrus: https://creativemarket.com/blog/designer-combines-papyrus-an... (since renamed Comic Parchment due to litigious arseholery).
Funeral invitation in comic sans (or your combo punch of comic sans + papyrus) is absolutely my vibe, brb gotta update my will to stipulate this
Jokes aside, I see a lot of either font on local small businesses' branding and it definitely makes an impression, for better or (usually) worse. I'm probably missing out on some great local businesses because I've written them off without really thinking about it until now because of using either font.
Well, I gave two examples of many possibilities. To go into a bit more detail on them:
Bad news from work in a jovial friendly font like comic sans would be inappropriate from the view of entirely failing to show empathy and read the room. A typeface like that on a 0% pay rise, redundancy notice, or news that the team had lost a significant contract would be an extra slap in the face. I have seen this sort of thing. The level of incredulity that could be read into your reply begs a question or two back: do you really think it might be appropriate?, and if so: why?
The funeral notice is more of a grey area as it depends on the person being funed. I don't think many would want comic sans used in that context, I know I wouldn't, but of course some might, and may even request it. Heck, if they requested bright rainbow striped Ransom Note Extra Bold with added porn windings, darn well use that. It is their funeral, after all.
I don't know if I'm unique or something, but Radon is extremely painful for me to look at and makes everything harder to read. It makes me feel like I'm dyslexic or something. I currently use Fira Code and find that very easy to read and look at.
It’s not just you. A few weeks ago I saw the “noble gas” fonts here on HN and gave them a try, ended up going back to JetBrains Mono. Still haven’t found one that can reliably displace it—even my prior daily driver, Fira Code!
Try Hack. I've tried many including Jetbrains Mono and Fira Code. Both are really good but I drifted back to Hack. It just hits a comfortable place for me.
Good suggestion. I like it a lot, but the Regular weight is still too bold for my taste. I'm using JetBrains Mono ExtraLight right now, so I just wish Hack had a couple lighter-weight options to try out.
Maybe I just need more time getting used to them, but I just tried installing JetBrains Mono and Hack and switched between them + Fira Code a bunch and I still prefer Fira Code.
I just don't like it as a comic handwriting font. Something about its character, or lack of character. It should feel lively and impish, but instead it feels lame and half-dead, to me. There's all these attempts at quirkiness like the 'C' with its irregular curve and little hook, but they all fall flat, they don't seem natural, they don't have rhythm. It gives me a feeling like I've been handed a weak joke and I'm expected to read it aloud.
My daily driver for the last year or so. But it really is an acquired taste. Some colleagues love it and now use it as well, some hate looking at it and comment on it every time I share my screen.
Does anyone else remember when the OpenBSD people were releasing research slides and other material in MS comic sans? The LibreSSL logo still has it on their site and if you scroll far enough here [1] they go off about 'weaponizing' it, something about the license actually being free enough to piss off linux nerds while being what it is enough to piss off design nerds
It is quite readable, has a certain softness along with some uniformity to it without all the comedy. I used it for quite a while before settling on Iosevka.
IBM Plex (which I'm currently using) also has the double-story (or Roman) 'a', I like how distinct it is from 'o' and 'q' compared to single-story (or Italic) 'a'.
I wanted to hate this, but it's actually not horrible at all? Looks nice just as a regular sans-serif font even - turns out the issue with comic sans is the letter spacing?
I'm working on a fork of it [1], because the original didn't have diacritics (á,ã,etc.), the metrics were a bit off for me and the "f" has a line at the bottom which I didn't like; and I'm also trying to adjust parameters because some IDEs (Eclipse on Windows) are have problems with it. I've also made it work with Python 3 and put the source fonts in submodules so you don't need to search for them manually to build it yourself. Work in progress.
Huh, I’m pretty sure the version I use is the one from the post and it does have diacritics. (I’m not on my computer now but will check later.)
One thing that bothers me, though, is that “í” is oddly positioned and almost makes it look like there’s an extra space between it and the following character.
There is a fork of this[1] that includes programming ligatures, which might make this a more viable FOSS alternative to Comic-Code mentioned elsewhere.
Wow, this is weirdly lovely. I don't think I would code with it (probably!) but it would look great for sort of blackboard-ish code samples in teaching materials.
There is also Comic Code by the same author: https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code. Feels like a more polished version of Comic Mono (but it is paid, too).
It is all relative, if you want the set of normal, italic, bold and bold italic you need the 80$ package.
A lot of people seems to use a coding font, wear off a bit of it or want a new one just to make a small change and have diversity. It an expense you might not be ready to spend for something you may not be 100% sure you will want to use for more than a couple of months.
He has a set of demo fonts but from what I understand this would swap random characters to rectangle so you can't really try it working on an actual code. This is only useful to check quickly how it looks on your IDE or terminal but I usually spend a few hours working on a font before deciding to commit using it for more or swapping back to my previous preferred one.
As I said a year ago, the i, l, and f serifs feel extremely non-comic. It's not right if it's not sans. IMO https://www.dafont.com/pointfree.font is still the best monospace comic font. All the others try to uncomic themselves with smoother more regular letterforms as though the goal for some reason is to become more mechanical and less lovingly human. No! I reject it! Pointfree retains the purity of the original beauty without sacrifice.
I have a thing for monospaced fonts and sans-serif.
What they all have in common is slab-like serifs on the i and j. It is not an easy problem to solve to make these two fit harmonically in their allotted space but does anyone know a monospace font that solved this issue in a different way?
It bothers me that they changed a lot of letters from the original Comic Sans. They even added serifs, which contradicts the "Sans", and the spirit of the original!
We have a group chat with 20 random people sending just Comic Sans spotted in the wild. Just pictures, nothing else. Its the best thing that ever happened to me.
After trying out a few Nerd Font variants I found this one. V1 looks correct, the second version supposedly fixes some bugs but looks worse. https://github.com/xtevenx/ComicMonoNF
I've yet to find a programming font better than Ubuntu Mono, but I definitely want to try this as it looks really nice. What's the difference between this and Comic Shanns Mono, though? There is a nerd font[0] available for the latter.
This has been my coding and terminal font for about three years now.
I really like it. I find it really easy to read, and it's fun to see people's reactions when they suddenly realize that they've been staring at Comic Sans on my computer.
I need to try out Comic Code at some point, but it's hard for me to justify when Comic Mono is free.
Reminds me it’s about time I ditch my .pe script in my 3270 font and turn it into Python. There’s a number of things I can do to improve it that are just too unwieldy with FontForge’s built-in language (mostly for the lack of good docs).
I have used Comic Mono as my coding font for the past 2 years and unironically love it. I installed it as a joke so I could take some screenshots and get funny reactions out of my friends, but found myself genuinely enjoying the readability. These days I frequently forget it's even installed except when someone new joins the team and sees my IDE setup for the first time:
"What font is that??"
"Oh, haha, yeah... It's Comic Sans, but monospaced!"
I said in another thread about mono fonts, that I now have used comicMono so long, I automatically just put it into "Courier" and when I see a real Courier font, I do a double-take.
I find it very easy to read as well as fun. I had similar feelings about using Monaco in the past. I find it personally makes programming easier on the eyes and enjoyable.
I remember reading the font is similar to the letters that are taught in kindergarten which is a theory of why it's easy on the eyes.
[1] https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
[0]: https://www.tosche.net/fonts/dossier
https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/tabular-type-foundry...
I know some people find it easier to read, but that explanation does not seem right to me. For one thing are kids not taught to read using printed materials? I taught my kids to read using whole words - flash cards and then "look and say" books and those did not use fonts anything like this.
I personally find it hard to read and it slows me down slightly. I wonder whether some people benefit from being slowed down? Maybe making their eye movements more deliberate or efficient?
It's not that much.
It's fine to use free versions instead, but maybe let's stop asking for freebies from folks who make their living that way, especially from Indy folks. (Badger your average megacorp for free stuff for all you want, they'll find ways to extract money somehow)
If I could get the entire font family for $30 or so I would consider it despite all the free alternatives, but $150 is just way too much if you are making a non-US salary.
The full collection is $100. At average European salaries, that's (at worst) half a day of work. Not unnoticeable, but if you care about your tools, not an amount that's entirely unreasonable. The coding family is, as you say, $30 - 90 minutes of work.
Beyond US, Europe, and other affluent countries, yes, it gets somewhat unaffordable. I don't have a good answer here. But I don't think asking indy folks to fix global inequality is the right answer, either. They need to live too.
Some choose to release their fonts for free (Monaspace, Comic Mono, Inconsolata...), but that's a choice they made for themselves. They ultimately decided it was affordable for them to do that. And that's great!
But I really have a problem with complaining about people who are trying to make a living, demanding they give away their work. One because it's somewhat entitled ("I deserve to get your work for free"), and two because it's a large part of what discourages indy work. Something our industry sorely needs.
> .OTF, .TTF, .WOFF, .WOFF2
Hopefully your OS of choice supports one of those.
Jokes aside, this is the only font I've ever paid for, and I use it for all my text editing across Linux/MacOS/Windows with no issues.
$16 to upgrade my life? well worth it. $16 to own something that I'd need to carry around for the rest of my life in a file, or track a download code for, and configure into every new system I boot up, and... nah, that's buying a responsibility
creatives out there: you are using and benefitting from the free open source internet where other creatives gave away their work product free. Stop trying to monetize your tiny contributions.
If you think they're not worth it then just click away.
And syncing a file isn't exactly hard in 2024.
Turns out he was also using Comic Code, and he basically had the same feelings as you towards it. I thought what the heck why not, and gave it a go. Now I'm hooked as well, for the very same reasons.
Coding, somehow, is just more fun and enjoyable now. Moreover, it's probably one of the more legible fonts I've ever used. Didn't expect that!
https://monaspace.githubnext.com/ (go down to variants, it's 4th)
It actually works!
I actually really like Comic Sans and that style of font. Don't understand the haters!
1. Gratuitous overuse often in inappropriate places (bad news from work, invitation to a funeral, etc.)
2. The fact that it was optimised in its hinting for low resolution screens common around the time of its creation (and its initial target, via MS Bob) making it not optimal for higher resolutions (in print, or on more modern higher resolution screens with or without sub-pixel rendering). If you are going to use that sort of font, I think there are better choices than Comic Sans itself (unless CS has had updates over the years, which, come to think of it, is not unlikely).
If you really want to wind up people who care too much about what fonts you use, try combining the two most overuses and disliked with Comic Papyrus: https://creativemarket.com/blog/designer-combines-papyrus-an... (since renamed Comic Parchment due to litigious arseholery).
Jokes aside, I see a lot of either font on local small businesses' branding and it definitely makes an impression, for better or (usually) worse. I'm probably missing out on some great local businesses because I've written them off without really thinking about it until now because of using either font.
You're begging the question. Why is it inappropriate?
> I actually really like Comic Sans and that style of font. Don't understand the haters!
Then you replied saying among other things that its use is inappropriate in many contexts.
But that’s circular. why is it deemed inappropriate?
Bad news from work in a jovial friendly font like comic sans would be inappropriate from the view of entirely failing to show empathy and read the room. A typeface like that on a 0% pay rise, redundancy notice, or news that the team had lost a significant contract would be an extra slap in the face. I have seen this sort of thing. The level of incredulity that could be read into your reply begs a question or two back: do you really think it might be appropriate?, and if so: why?
The funeral notice is more of a grey area as it depends on the person being funed. I don't think many would want comic sans used in that context, I know I wouldn't, but of course some might, and may even request it. Heck, if they requested bright rainbow striped Ransom Note Extra Bold with added porn windings, darn well use that. It is their funeral, after all.
https://www.codingfont.com/
But Krypton is the best :P
https://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00001.ht...
https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
But I've been using Comic Mono for 2 years now (SW developer) and forgot all about it. The mark of a truly great font.
[1]: https://github.com/caioycosta/comic-fork-mono-font
One thing that bothers me, though, is that “í” is oddly positioned and almost makes it look like there’s an extra space between it and the following character.
[1] https://github.com/wayou/comic-mono-font/
[1] https://github.com/subframe7536/maple-font
https://abrudz.github.io/APL386/
I have used Comic Code for years for this reason, and get the occasional giggle when pair programming.
https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312200
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520510
[1] https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia
A lot of people seems to use a coding font, wear off a bit of it or want a new one just to make a small change and have diversity. It an expense you might not be ready to spend for something you may not be 100% sure you will want to use for more than a couple of months.
He has a set of demo fonts but from what I understand this would swap random characters to rectangle so you can't really try it working on an actual code. This is only useful to check quickly how it looks on your IDE or terminal but I usually spend a few hours working on a font before deciding to commit using it for more or swapping back to my previous preferred one.
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312200)
What they all have in common is slab-like serifs on the i and j. It is not an easy problem to solve to make these two fit harmonically in their allotted space but does anyone know a monospace font that solved this issue in a different way?
https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-59663.html
I ran into two problems.
1. Poor coverage of non-ASCII characters (it won't display simple accented letters, pound sign, euro sign, etc.).
2. []{} are cut off at the top.
[0] https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
I really like it. I find it really easy to read, and it's fun to see people's reactions when they suddenly realize that they've been staring at Comic Sans on my computer.
I need to try out Comic Code at some point, but it's hard for me to justify when Comic Mono is free.
If nothing else, Serious adds the lambda symbol, which is a useful shorthand to use with Emacs' pretty symbols mode.
Loved all the recommendations in this thread. I have been thinking about getting away from Source Code Pro for a while.
"What font is that??"
"Oh, haha, yeah... It's Comic Sans, but monospaced!"
"Uh huh. Okie dokie then."
I probably should.
edit: drop actually from prev sentence
Google: Comic Sans.
Enjoy.