When comparing Anka/Coder vs Google Noto Sans Mono, the Slant community recommends Anka/Coder for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Anka/Coder is ranked 20th while Google Noto Sans Mono is ranked 102nd. The most important reason people chose Anka/Coder is:
The zero really stands out and looks quite different from zeroes in most other fonts. The addition of the slash means you'll never have to second guess if that character is actually an "O" or if it is a "0".
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Zero distinguishable thanks to protruding slash
The zero really stands out and looks quite different from zeroes in most other fonts. The addition of the slash means you'll never have to second guess if that character is actually an "O" or if it is a "0".
Pro Open source
Because it's open source, Anka/Coder is freely available to anyone.
Pro Practical yet stylish
Anka/Coder has just the right balance between style and readability.
Pro Compact
Condensed and, even to a greater extent, narrow versions allow for compact lines without sacrificing readability.
Pro Excellent support for Unicode characters
Unicode uses 16 bits per character, meaning that it can represent more than 65,000 unique characters.
Cons
Con Some characters aren't distinguishable from others
This is especially the case with the colon, which is barely distinguishable from the semi-colon.
Con Not quite as charming at sizes of 10 and 11 pt
There are some hinting issues at these sizes: upper curves are bent sharper while the lower look is squashed to the baseline. Also, the dot of "i" appears merged with the stick at 11 pts. At 9 pts, the font looks good again (nice for watches, compiler output, etc).
Con Zero is difficult to identify
As it's not dotted or slashed, "0" is more difficult to distinguish.
Con Non-monospace ligature replacements for 'fl', 'fi', 'ffl', 'ffi'
By default, the substrings 'fl', 'fi', 'ffl', and 'ffi' are each crammed into one character width, making it not a truly monospace font. For example, the word 'flag' is rendered as three characters wide.
Con Letters capital 'i' and lowercase 'L' are too similar
The only difference is almost unnoticable.
Con Difficult to distinguish between a period and acomma as well as a colon and a semi-colon
Comma has very small tail, making it difficult to distinguish from a period (full stop). Same applies to colon and semi-colon.