Anka/Coder vs Hack
When comparing Anka/Coder vs Hack, the Slant community recommends Hack for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Hack is ranked 7th while Anka/Coder is ranked 20th.
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 Very readable
Pro Libre webfonts are available in svg, eot, ttf, woff, and woff2 formats
Hack is free for unlimited commercial and non-commercial use. The webfonts are hinted (TrueType instruction set) to optimize display on the screen and are built into all commonly used web font formats with each new release. They include the complete release character set and smaller (filesize) basic Latin subset releases. They are available in the build directory of the repository.
Pro Fixes many readability issues in Vera/DejaVu
The tilde symbol ('~'), comma (',') and semicolon (';') glyphs have been modified to be more readable at small sizes and/or on non-HD displays. In addition, the underscore symbol ('_') has been slightly lifted for alignment with surrounding characters.
Pro Avaliable in many GNU/Linux distro package manager
Including Debian/Ubuntu (fonts-hack), Fedora (font-hack-ttf), OpenSUSE (hack-fonts), Arch (ttf-hack) and probably many more. Much nicer than having to manually install/update
Pro Free/Open license
Pro Renders accurately on Windows on all font sizes
Pro Based on the tried and tested Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
The fonts are in the Vera Sans Mono lineage with a significant expansion of the character set (which includes Cyrillic and modern Greek character sets), new glyph shapes and modifications of the original glyph shapes, as well as improvements in metrics and hinting/TT instructions to make it more legible at small text sizes used for source code.
The changelog is available here.
Pro Powerline glyph patch is included
The regular set is patched with Powerline glyphs by default. There is no need to patch the font to use it in Powerline environments.
Pro Source code is released in UFO format
UFO source format is widely supported by all modern font editors if you would like to modify the typeface.
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 No ligatures in the default font
Although patched versions with ligatures do exist - see here.
Con Sometimes difficult to distinguish lowercase "i" (eye) and lowercase "l" (ell)
When using a higher resolution monitor and a smaller font size, the lowercase "i" (eye) and lowercase "l" (ell) are very difficult to distinguish. The space between the dot and the remainder of the letter seems to somehow disappear, thereby making it look like a solid line, similar to the lowercase "l" (ell).
Con Too similar to DejaVu
See this gif comparison between the two fonts.
