Just to nitpick.
But I am right now going through every one of those fonts in the app to compare with the one I've used for almost a decade now.
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.
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.
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.
My one complaint is the tilde.
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.
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 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.
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.
When you consider that programmers spend most of their time reading code, it's not surprising that many programmers care about the font being used.
Monospaced fonts are also interesting from an artistic perspective that resonates with programmers. Font designers are able to be expressive and original despite — or perhaps because of — the constraints of the problem: all characters must have the same width and the text should be readable for long periods of time, often at small sizes.
E.g. https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=15281.0
The Dina font is free. You are welcome to use, distribute
and modify it however you want, just don't use it for
anything illegal or claim that you made it.*
Every font from this thread is already there in the app so you might as well just try them all.