When comparing MT Lucida Console vs MonoLisa, 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 MonoLisa is ranked 54th. 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 Customizable OpenType features downloads
The website offers customizable downloads for editors that don't support OpenType features natively.
Pro Script variant
It comes with script variant for italics.
Pro Ligatures
The typeface supports over 120 optionally enabled ligatures for common coding tasks.
Pro Italics
The typeface comes with an italic version.
Pro Space
Space used by the characters has been carefully balanced to keep them light to read.
Pro Reading flow
The characters have been designed to flow into each other so that the font feels easy to read.
Pro Distinction
Specific care has been put to make programming characters such as 1, i, and l or O or 0 easy to tell apart.
Pro Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means there's more space for designing characters like "m".
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 Not free
This font requires a purchase in order to be used. The cheapest version ('Basic') is 60 dollars. There is a free trial, though.
Con Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means a short adjustment period may be required. If you have a limited amount of horizontal space, the wider glyphs may be problematic as well.