When comparing Panic Sans vs Fira 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 Fira Mono is ranked 51st. 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 Looks great and is easy on eyes
Almost looks like Source Code pro and works great with Intelli J where Source Code Pro renders all junk on one of the primary IDE.
Very good for people who read code through out the day.
Pro Extremely readable
You can look at the code for hours and hours. The height between lines and the spacing is perfect.
Pro Offers better performance in some Emacs builds
This font is used by some Emacs users on Mac OS X in order to get better performance.
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 Large line height
Compared to other options, Fira has a high line height, which reduces the number of lines you can see on screen at one time.