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.

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.

I truely wonder how many people purchased a font for coding, at $40 when so many perfectly suitable fonts are free/open source.

Not to sound flippant or pretentious, but for me, $40 is practically free for a software tool. On top of that, I can expense licenses if I use them for my work. I’m guessing that most people in my position would have no problem paying $40 for a font.

It's still a bit much IMO. It reminds me of Sublime Text being priced at $70 or Input Mono being $40-100+ depending on the options you choose.

I assume they are willing to accept the risk of piracy and/or lost sales to free alternatives like Fira Code, and plan to make their money on institutional licenses instead.

I would bet that most who wouldn’t buy Sublime at $70 wouldn’t buy it at $35 either. If you’re paying for text editors and fonts they’re probably important enough to you that you probably won’t let price deter you unless it’s truly exorbitant.

Personally speaking I’m a bit more spendy on small dev products because I know it’s harder for them to stay afloat, unlike Jetbrains or Adobe which aren’t really impacted by my purchase decisions in any meaningful way.

I am not saying you are wrong but to me the real problem is death of a thousand cuts problem: I have zero issues paying for quality work and I do; but when these things start piling up -- fonts, images, logos/icons, IDEs, creative software -- you can easily find yourself spending $1000.

I am not stingy but I feel drowned in a sea of good work each requiring its payment. This phenomena turned me off paying for fonts and settling for free ones.

I find Dank's "f" disturbingly idiosyncratic.

Thanks for the introduction to Dank. First time I've seen it and I like the look of it. Particularly the 'f' shape.

What's the closest free font you've seen to it? As it's so different from my usual monospace font I want to try ssomething similar first to see how I find it, before spending money on it.

Is there a side-by-side comparison between this and Fira Code? They look very similar (apart from the italics).

It only lists free fonts