When comparing MT Lucida Console vs Apple San Francisco Mono, the Slant community recommends MT Lucida Console for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” MT Lucida Console is ranked 25th while Apple San Francisco Mono is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose MT Lucida Console is:
The design of Lucida Console is very clean.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to read
The design of Lucida Console is very clean.
Pro Feels natural
Pro Pixel sharp
Pro Very neutral
Pro Clear and dis·tin·guish·a·ble
Code is very readable at both big and small sizes.
Pro Beautiful with high pixel density
Pro Best legible font
This font is legible in every condition.
Pro Visible punctuation
Punctuation is prominent and easily visible.
Pro Looks good on low and high PPI displays
SF Mono looks good on external monitors and Retina Displays. Large and small font sizes.
Cons
Con No bold or italics variant
Con Zero is not slashed or dotted
This can make it hard to distinguish the letter "O" from the number "0".
Con Limited Unicode support
Con Apple is locking down this font
It's not open in any sense of the word. It even gives warnings if you try to rip it out of the Terminal.app or Xcode bundles. Obviously, Apple only wants it on their tools. This is such a shame. It should work in other editors, too. It's a beautiful font. Apple open sourced swift, why can't they be open with a monospace font?
Con No Ligature support
Does not support Ligatures so it doesn't play well with some terminal themes.
Con Lowercase l (ell) is similar to 1 (one)
Con Slightly difficult to use outside of Xcode, Terminal, or Console
The typeface isn't available in Font Book, etc. unless the user imports the files embedded in the apps above.