Programming Fonts

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A new font was released by JetBrains called JetBrains Mono, and it is now the default for their IDEs (since 2020.1). However, this comes after years of their IDEs defaulting to Tonsky’s Fira Code (since 2016.2), which I used for a time before that. They are both monospaced fonts, built specifically for programing, with great effort and beauty within, and while making substantial use of ligatures.

A mono-spaced font is a font in which all of the characters have the same width. This is vital for programming so that all the lines of code line up. Lining up exactly allows for individual differences to be picked out easier, and for blocks of code that reference a slightly different thing each line but where each line is doing the same thing to look neat and tidy. This is separate from common fonts you see on news articles, or social media as variable-width fonts allow for smoother serifs, which provide a better reading experience.

Ligatures are the combination of more than one character or symbol into a single symbol. This is nice in mono-spaced fonts as it is usually a luxury enjoyed by variable width fonts, with the addition of being able to stylize the symbols. This is additionally nice in a programming-specific font as it allows for a combination of characters which may otherwise be interpreted separately to instead be represented as a single operator which may even be fundamentally different to just the individual characters in combination.

However, as a long-time user of Fira Code, but also someone who enjoys JetBrains Mono (read: JetBrains fan-boy), I want to compare the fonts and pick my new default. As such, I’m writing this while I compare them.

First I will compare and contrast, then assign these differences as either pros or cons and explain these assignments, then provide examples and my opinions overall.

What they have in common

As I mentioned, these are both beautiful, mono-spaced fonts purpose-built for programming and contain programming-specific ligatures. The ligatures (such as combining -> into a solid arrow) are absolutely amazing at a) doing their job of combining these multiple characters into one symbol as is reflected in how the character combination behaves in a programming language, and b) doing their higher duty of making your code substantially prettier.

They are both fonts that make coding more beautiful with their ligature additions and overall design. There are many mono-spaced fonts which are included stock with operating systems but many of them are ugly, most lack any ligatures, and most are not designed for programming specifically lacking features such as characters lining up better horizontally, vertically, and with symbols such as colons (:).

Both fonts are open-source and freely licensed. Fira Code makes use of a GitHub repository (where you can see code) as it’s main website and is licensed under SIL 1.1, and JetBrains has a repository on GitHub as well for JetBrains Mono, which is licensed under Apache 2.0.

What separates them

Fira Code is primarily developed by one individual with assistance from the community (though the font it is based on, Mozilla’s Fira, is backed by a company, so theoretically you could continue this font yourself), whereas JetBrains Mono is backed by JetBrains - it is still primarily designed by one individual, but if he vanishes then JetBrains would presumably replace him.

Fira Code makes use of some more stylized characters which are a nice touch, and provides additional options (such as a zero with a dot, or with a line, etc). JetBrains Mono does not have as much style on characters, instead opting for great consistency, and does not offer any options.

JetBrains Mono has a substantially more vertical italic set, whereas Fira Code utilizes much more of a slant in its italics.

JetBrains Mono characters, lacking any stylizing, are more consistent which includes the widths of the characters within their boxes. Fira Code, on the other hand, has characters that vary slightly in size.

Fira Code, not being tied to a product itself, provides guides / tips / help on utilizing the fonts in varying software. Whereas JetBrains Mono comes standard in JetBrains IDEs … “what else would you need?”

JetBrains Mono’s lowercase characters are taller, it’s symbols shorter, and everything generally being closer in height while it’s symbols have a consistent stroke height that is separate from that of the characters. Fira Code does not do this and instead it’s symbols and characters vary more greatly in stroke height and its symbols differ from one another in height.

Pros and Cons

These are a few of the pros and cons I could come up with for each font, not really organized in any way and certainly not accounting for everything. I don’t include the same items for each font, but I include the items that seem more important to me.

Jetbrains Mono
Pros	Cons
Italics are easier to read	Less beautiful, lacks stylized characters
Characters have defined space on their sides	Lowercase and Uppercase letters are more similar
Supports languages other than english	Does not offer options
Included in JetBrains products	Lacks a retina font variant
Easier to scan through code
Backed by a company

Fira Code
Pros	Cons
Different and stylized characters	Characters don’t have all the same margins around them
Customizability	You have to build the font to customize it
Retina font that works everywhere ligatures do
Easier to read through all your code
Symbol strokes end at differing heights, marginally easier to match up differing brackets
There’s not a dot inside zero unless you configure the font that way

Samples

I put together a few basic samples of the fonts, nothing fancy. For Fira Code, I did not use the Retina version of the font to keep the playing field level - we’ve already established that JetBrains Mono does not have a retina version and that that is dumb.

Here is some sample TypeScript code, it’s animated and switches between each font every few seconds. I think the key take away here is: look at the comments, and look at the code overall versus the actual readability of the code.

Before you contact me to tell me I should just use an XML Parser: trust me, I would, but it’s a proprietary syntax - not much different here, but it’ll break parsers later.

A minor takeaway on this one, check out that regex in the block for “If the tad does not close itself”. JetBrains Mono does not have a ligature for a pipe and a greater than sign, but Fira Code does. I don’t know of any syntax that uses such a symbol, but I would love that ligature there - however, for regex and probably other such syntaxes, that ligature does make things a tad more confusing.

And here are just some characters and symbols from both fonts right next to each other, nothing crazy.

A takeaway on this one for me is the at-sign sybmol and the double ampersands ligature in terms of pros for Fira Code - I really don’t care for how JetBrains Mono cuts off an ampersand’s tail just because it’s a ligature, and look at that stroke-width consistency for JetBrains Mono.

Conclusion

Now, this is personal, and I just wanted to share all my thoughts and key factors on it, so take it with a grain of salt.

My takeaway is that while JetBrains may be a bit more polished and collected, I think overall that Fira Code brings some much needed style into your code and that’s worth the exchange in and of itself, plus of course the Retina version of the font - that could almost win it by itself, too.

I believe that Fira Code makes it much more enjoyable to read through code as you try to make sense of it, as well as having that extra style I mentioned. In contrast, I think JetBrains Mono may well be better for actually writing out your code - with everything being more consistent and straight forward with no fluff, that probably reduces the complexity of looking back and around inside of your code.

If I were someone to have multiple config setups for my IDEs/editors, I would probably honestly use JetBrains Mono when I write code, and Fira Code when I review other code, or when I come back to older code. However, I’m not, I review code and revisit old more more often than I write new code, and I love that extra flair so much from Fira Code, I think that wins me right on over, and I will continue to use Fira Code.

Online Safety

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 2020-01-17

When people think changing their passwords keeps anyone/thing out of their account except for people who know the passwords

Goal

Teach people so that they the knowledge and easy-to-use, free tools to keep themselves safe online.

TL;DR: remove applications from your accounts and enable two factor authentication, don’t forget about your email account, browser, and computer itself either.

Remember: You’re data is never safe. Security breaches on major websites and company databases happen daily, including government and proprietary systems you have no choice but to be in the database of (Equitrust). If your goal is to not be on the grid, try not being on the grid: which includes not having social media accounts. If your goal is to have your already limited communiques be as secure as you can make it, read on.

Steps and Tools

Here are three steps (installing 3-6, applications, going through some settings, and playing around in your operating system’s control panel) to secure your accounts, browsers, and computers.

There are going to be two links next to each suggestion showing how to fulfill the suggestion on a variety of services (F: Facebook, G: Google, X/O: XKCD or The Oatmeal Comic [non-instructional, just funny]); and more links at the bottom of each section to blog posts/articles/etc. on the topic from respectable companies (links are shrunk to ensure my sanity when looking at the code for this page - they go through bit.ly).

The Actual Account

An account can be compromised a number of ways. Whether it’s an app you absent-mindedly approved injecting posts for you or sending emails as you, a snooper on your wi-fi stealing your passwords, malware on your computer either taking your passwords or injecting malware that may do so, your computer being stolen, or an number of other things: you need to secure it to avoid data (or even financial and identity) theft, and just general ads.

To actually secure any account, remove applications that have access to the account that are unrecognized [F] [G], enable a security feature like two factor authentication [F] [G], go through and modify what your account follows/likes to ensure you aren’t made a target unnecessarily [F] [G], review the locations your account is logged in from [F] [G], and finally control who can see your account [F]. You might as well update your password, too [F] [G] [X].

Links
- Facebook’s list of tips + instructions	- Google’s list of tips + instructions
- Facebook security settings	- Google’s security settings
- Facebook Account Security Checkup	- Google Account Security Checkup
EFF: Protecting Yourself on Social Media

Your Email

Email accounts are central to social media and other types of accounts, due primarily to the fact that you can recover any account you have the email account for by saying “I forgot my password” with little security in the recovery process.

Luckily, you can secure them in a similar manner, and switch to a real email provider (as in, if you don’t know numerous people outside of your family that use it, switch: Yahoo, Hotmail, Comcast, AOL, etc are all providers to move away from [they give an impression of computer illiteracy, they are laxe in their security, they have been hacked many, many times] ^{[O] [how to
switch]} - GMail is safe, powerful, simple, and well known; Protonmail is incredibly safe, a bit more complex, but young). Your email really isn’t really safe unless you use anti-spam features though ^[G], because even the most veteran of internet users can sometimes be fooled by these; when you don’t like an email, or can realize it’s spam, don’t just delete it, mark it as spam - this improves the anti-spam features, and will proactively mark similar emails as spam.

Finally, you can see if your email, and if particular accounts, were compromised -or at least listed- in a known data-breach on Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). Putting in your email address will tell you if you were “pwned” (listed in a breach) and if you scroll down a little then it will show you the website that was compromised, or if it was a general list from an unknown source; if it says you have been (you probably have) then you should change the passwords on those websites specifically, and update your email password. You can also click “Notify Me” at the top of the website to receive an email notification any time your email address shows up in a new breach, so you can update your account and email account password as quickly as possible.

Note: In general information about breaches, such as updates to HIBP, will come some time after a breach. Sometimes it’s not until the list surfaces somewhere that can be found by HIBP, sometimes companies hide it away until they’ve fixed their holes before they will list a breach. However, in general breaches will only result in a dump of the database, meaning they see your email address, but your password may be safe. This means your account could become a target for password guessing, and your email account as well, but that your account may well stay safe until the information does show up.

Additional

(Furthermore, people on Facebook get hacked a lot. We’ve all seen the spam posts, messages, or app requests. Notify these friends, and un-follow or unfriend them if they’re unwilling to secure their account - at some point you may forget that they were hacked, and accept an app invite from them, this app could be the same malware that jacked their account)

2 - Your Browser

(F: Firefox, C: Chrome)

Additionally, no account is really safe if you browse the web unsafely. Install an add-on to your browser that blocks ads (such as ublock origin ^{[F] [C]} or more thoroughly, though also more complicated: privacy badger ^{[F] [C]}); ads are sometimes just ads, but on sketchier or lower-budget sites, they’re malicious as well. Also, go through your browser’s add-ons, some add-ons are side-loaded when installing applications (FireFox has just started disallowing this ^{[F] [C]}), or are installed intentionally, forgotten, and somebody hacks the application (or the developer of it sells out) and your browser updates it to a very rotten version of the add-on - remove any you don’t use often.

3 - Your Computer

But your computer isn’t safe until you use good anti-virus to scan the depths of it, remove threats, and become proactive about your own safety. Make sure you have some good anti-virus. Anti-virus such as Norton and AVG are hardly actually anti-virus, but more like malware themselves - install something known, free, and doesn’t bother you for a paid version with pop-ups; I like MalwareBytes and always have it running, or Comodo if I know my computer is compromised (it’s really annoying to keep it around forever, but does a great cleaning job). Install a firewall on top of your system’s to reduce the likelihood of any malware on your computer functioning properly - I liked TinyWall (don’t put it in learning mode unless you have already secured your machine, otherwise it will become much less useful, however it doesn’t seem to work properly in Windows 10) and now Glasswire (I paid the 40$ for it because I love it and it has solid support, but you really don’t need to). If you know other people use your internet, frequent public networks, torrent, visit sketchy sites regularly or anything of the like, also consider a VPN (virtual private network) - they can be pricey, but if you go through reviews of free ones and find a good one you can still be better off - I like the private internet access VPN which is only 7$/month and is very easy to set up - admittedly, it does not have a super user -friendly UI. I have not found a free one that seems trustworthy, and in addition to that a lot of the big-name VPNs, the ones you see advertise on YouTube channels a lot, have been hacked and data stolen more than if you’d been unprotected. Here’s a great video on YouTube that helps explain if you need a VPN, and what it actually does for you. The simplest way to clean your computer though is to take the not-so-immense amount of time to go through your installed programs and remove programs you don’t remember installing or were side-loaded during the installation of a real program, here’s a guide to do that on Windows 10. Finally, make sure your operating system is supported. If it’s not supported, you’re not getting vital security patches or any generic improvements.

Windows 8 (now in extended support, which is only security patches) and 10 are the only supported Windows versions (excluding enterprise deals).
Mac OS 10.13 (High Sierra, extended support) and 10.14 (Mojave) are the only supported Mac OS versions.

Update your operating system to the latest version, and be sure to run update checks to get the latest patches. If you don’t want to pay for the latest major version, then you can always switch to a user-friendly Linux distribution - here’s a good article that explains how you can ease yourself into it, and here’s an article listing some beginner-friendly distros.

Conclusion

There is one program in there (PIA VPN) that costs money, and it’s not even required. Securing your technology is free, easy, and prevents future issues; why wouldn’t you do it?

Fun Fact

This is some of the stuff I do to “speed up computers” (which normally just means removing junk and malware). Your computer is as fast as it gets, it only slows down because you load it with crap, a component is failing, a system update failed partially, or your hard drive is far more full than it should be. Hard drives are cheap, even external ones; if this is the case, just buy one, format it, and use a drive that isn’t loaded with hardware manufacturer’s junk.

Programming Fonts

What they have in common

What separates them

Pros and Cons

Samples

Conclusion

Online Safety

Goal

Steps and Tools

1 - Your Social Account

The Actual Account

Your Email

Additional

2 - Your Browser

3 - Your Computer

Conclusion

Fun Fact