When comparing MT Andale Mono vs Fira Mono, the Slant community recommends MT Andale Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” MT Andale Mono is ranked 32nd while Fira Mono is ranked 51st. The most important reason people chose MT Andale Mono is:
It's easy to distinguish "0" from "O", "a" from "o", and "I" from "l" from "1".
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent legibility
It's easy to distinguish "0" from "O", "a" from "o", and "I" from "l" from "1".
Pro Good font variants
Boldface variant is not too heavy while italic face is not too spindly. Andale Mono contrasts with Source Code Pro, which is very similar in the regular font face.
Pro Looks great and is easy on eyes
Almost looks like Source Code pro and works great with Intelli J where Source Code Pro renders all junk on one of the primary IDE.
Very good for people who read code through out the day.
Pro Extremely readable
You can look at the code for hours and hours. The height between lines and the spacing is perfect.
Pro Offers better performance in some Emacs builds
This font is used by some Emacs users on Mac OS X in order to get better performance.
Cons
Con Not pure mono
Bold and italic are too wide, so it's not pure mono in combination with regular font.
Con Large line height
Compared to other options, Fira has a high line height, which reduces the number of lines you can see on screen at one time.