When comparing Panic Sans vs Apple San Francisco Mono, the Slant community recommends Panic Sans for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Panic Sans is ranked 36th while Apple San Francisco Mono is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose Panic Sans is:
Like its parent DejaVu and grandparent Bitstream Vera, this has tall and easily read letters.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Tall and legible
Like its parent DejaVu and grandparent Bitstream Vera, this has tall and easily read letters.
Pro Clearly distinguishes clashing characters
Panic Sans has added uniqueness for characters that are easily confused, such as "0" and "O", "l" and "1".
Pro Clarity and appealing to the eye
There is great line spacing and italics in Panic Sans.
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 Line spacing is small
This is a "pro" to me but some folks dislike the smaller space between lines (which is why it raises the underscore, which might otherwise vanish).
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.