When comparing MT Courier 12 vs Anonymous Pro, the Slant community recommends Anonymous Pro for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Anonymous Pro is ranked 9th while MT Courier 12 is ranked 77th. The most important reason people chose Anonymous Pro is:
Anonymous Pro is easily legible at small sizes as a bitmap font.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Clear glyph resolution
Pro Simple yet effective
Pro Comes pre-installed on almost any operating system
This means that the user doesn't have to go to the bother of installing anything.
Pro Readable even at small sizes
Anonymous Pro is easily legible at small sizes as a bitmap font.
Pro The best rendering character for DIGIT ONE
Pro Clashing characters are clearly distinguishable
Characters that could be mistaken for one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have distinct shapes to make them easier to tell apart in the context of source code.
Cons
Con 1 (one) and lowercase l (ell) are very similar and can be confused
Con Doesn't look very good
Con Doesn't have a slashed zero
Con Small 'l' (ell) is too similar to big 'I' (Eye)
You can tell the difference but need to concentrate on the letters.
See the word "Illegal" as an example.
It would be better if serifs are a little bit wider for the big 'I' (Eye) letter.
Con Smaller than other monospace fonts
Con Small punctuation makes readability difficult
In some programs it's hard to see punctuation marks, especially periods and colons.
Con Smaller then other monospaced fonts
Size 13 of Source Code Pro is slightly larger then size 14 of Anonymous Pro.
Con "0" glitch
The 0 (zero) symbol has a 'dent' on the left.
Con Exaggerated italics
The italicized version of the font is too slanted, meaning that italicized comments in code look really unbalanced.
Con Hard to distinguish [ and {
Braces [] and {} are very similar.