I was doing some development on my laptop tonight and I was getting fed up with the default font, Courier New, in Visual Studio. On my other laptop I have a different font and I found myself mighty frustrated, because Courier New isn't exactly the easiest to keep staring at. Also, it's not tight and compact, either. Font choice for programmers is very much a personal choice. Some other views on the subject:
So I found myself trying to figure out what font I had grown used to. Luckily, I remembered it had been posted as a suggestion in response to one of my articles. Looking back, the poster was none other than Adam Machanic, a very well respected SQL Server MVP. The font in question was:
ProFont for Windows (tweaked version)
I've learned a lot from Adam's blog posts because I have found that he rarely takes things at face value, instead choosing to run tests to confirm what is the best performing query method. If you don't subscribe to his blog (or to the aggregate feed for SQLBlog.com),you're missing a lot. I hadn't realized, probably due the passage of time, that I had picked this up from him, too.
It's amazing how something like the right display font can make life easier. I've downloaded the 'font in question' and I think I am going to stick with it. The TrueType version is especially nice - I hope it'll help in SQL Server 2008.
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Nico del Castillo
Microsoft 2008 Joint Launch Team
www.microsoft.com/2008jointlaunch
