When comparing Anonymous Pro vs Panic Sans, the Slant community recommends Anonymous Pro for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Anonymous Pro is ranked 9th while Panic Sans is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose Anonymous Pro is:
Anonymous Pro is easily legible at small sizes as a bitmap font.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Readable even at small sizes
Anonymous Pro is easily legible at small sizes as a bitmap font.
Pro The best rendering character for DIGIT ONE
Pro Clashing characters are clearly distinguishable
Characters that could be mistaken for one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have distinct shapes to make them easier to tell apart in the context of source code.
Pro Tall and legible
Like its parent DejaVu and grandparent Bitstream Vera, this has tall and easily read letters.
Pro Clearly distinguishes clashing characters
Panic Sans has added uniqueness for characters that are easily confused, such as "0" and "O", "l" and "1".
Pro Clarity and appealing to the eye
There is great line spacing and italics in Panic Sans.
Cons
Con Small 'l' (ell) is too similar to big 'I' (Eye)
You can tell the difference but need to concentrate on the letters.
See the word "Illegal" as an example.
It would be better if serifs are a little bit wider for the big 'I' (Eye) letter.
Con Smaller than other monospace fonts
Con Small punctuation makes readability difficult
In some programs it's hard to see punctuation marks, especially periods and colons.
Con Smaller then other monospaced fonts
Size 13 of Source Code Pro is slightly larger then size 14 of Anonymous Pro.
Con "0" glitch
The 0 (zero) symbol has a 'dent' on the left.
Con Exaggerated italics
The italicized version of the font is too slanted, meaning that italicized comments in code look really unbalanced.
Con Hard to distinguish [ and {
Braces [] and {} are very similar.
Con Line spacing is small
This is a "pro" to me but some folks dislike the smaller space between lines (which is why it raises the underscore, which might otherwise vanish).