When comparing Terminus vs Verdana, the Slant community recommends Terminus for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Terminus is ranked 18th while Verdana is ranked 75th. The most important reason people chose Terminus is:
Many fonts look terrible without anti-aliasing. Not Terminus, it looks clear and crisp.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks great even without anti-aliasing
Many fonts look terrible without anti-aliasing. Not Terminus, it looks clear and crisp.
Pro Beautiful crunch pixels
Pro Terminus is not going fat
Many fonts are fatty when they are used relatively large in size but Terminus does not have this issue. And now it works with IDEA.
Pro Free with Windows
Pro Compact while light
Packs lots of information into your screen space while remaining clear and never looking crowded.
Pro Renders perfectly at all sizes
Again, particularly in Windows
Pro Looks absolutely gorgeous in Windows
Looks good elsewhere as well, but the world-class hinting here really comes out with the windows rasterizer (probably optimized for it).
Cons
Con Italics are not very appealing
Italicized Terminus TTF doesn't appear as aesthetically pleasing as it was intended.
Con Not monospaced
-if that is an absolute must for you. But don't assume it is until you've tried without...