If you're willing to spend money on a font for coding, then do yourself a favor and take a look at PragmataPro as well. I bought a license (checks notes...) 8 years ago and it has served me very well.
If I was not down to pay for a font, then I'd probably use one of Iosevka's forms. Personally, however, it became clear to me that just like my monitor, the font I spend hours looking at every day is also worth some money.
I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols per line onto your screen, it's a sign that there's a coding style problem! Lines simply should be short enough to not require horizontal compression.
I keep my code below the 80 column mark, as is common. For me, the reason I like the more narrow Iosevka is because it lets me have more split buffers open on the same monitor. With Iosevka I can have 3 splits with a little over 80 columns each, other fonts only let me have two. I never noticed a decrease in readability but I've been using Iosevka for a very long time now, perhaps it's time to try out a wider font and see if it's worth it.
I like the narrower font so I can fit two side-by-side files with full 120 character width each on a regular 16:9 display. Iosevka is likely my forever font. I find it both beautiful and fit for purpose; I couldn't ask for more.
Re: "lines should be short." I prefer my code font to work even for bad code. It's not always my code that I'm looking at!
Ever tried editing two files side by side on a 13-14" screen? Good luck without a narrow font or tiny font sizes. Meanwhile I find narrow fonts just as readable, so for me it's an easy choice.
Iosevka is my all-time favorite font. MonoLisa seems to sell itself on being "wide", and Iosevka is the opposite of that. Each letter is exactly .5em, which is on the very narrow side of things as monospaced fonts go. So if this thing appeals to you, Iosevka isn't the free alternative you're looking for. But if you want the nicest monospaced font in the world, then Iosevka is ;)
I missed that. The website lets you compare it to IBM Plex and Fira Code as well. Same width, but a little bit more contrast. Compares very favorably if you want wide.
My takeaway is that monospaced fonts are basically a solved problem thanks to Iosevka. It does everything. And you can mix and match individual glyphs to your exact preferences!
Yeah - I paid for Pragmata back in the day and totally forgot about it when Iosevka appeared. Even reminds me a little bit of 6x13 which I used for so long with my Dell 22"...
If I was not down to pay for a font, then I'd probably use one of Iosevka's forms. Personally, however, it became clear to me that just like my monitor, the font I spend hours looking at every day is also worth some money.
https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/