A lot of fonts feel like this. It's only once you set a whole page set in them it they start to look different especially when you do side-by-side comparisons.

Programmer fonts are even more samey as they are used at such small sizes comparatively and of course have the additional constraint of being monospaced (most of the time).

Personally with the amount of code I stare at each day even an oddly placed pixel can be annoying.

They have a nice playground which lets you try different fonts. Give it a go: http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/playground.html (click once on the fonts dropdown then use the down arrow to compare them quickly)

It doesn't display ligatures.

I know. I just use one of the available monospace fonts on whatever OS I'm using (there's always at least one). I'm just too lazy/apathetic to bother with installing one of these things.

I used to feel the same way. Then for some reason Source Code Pro caught my attention on someone else's screen. Now I set up all my Dev environments with that (plus all the fancy extras for zsh).

Yeah like, why bother stressing over the exact configuration of pixels that you're using to make your i's tail.

Just pick a monospaced font that you can read and get to making something worthwhile.

If your project involves picking a default likable font for others to use it makes sense.

Also, in the larger scope of things all the "good enough"'s at times add up to something awful. Had we perfected everything the bothering wouldn't exist. You would look at the font and click some button to have or have not become it part of your collection.