This week I created a custom build of the Iosevka font. I’ve used Input Mono for a long time now, and was very happy with it. However, it was missing a few glyphs that I wanted to use. Moreover, I didn’t have a license for the Input font to use on e.g. my blog. Iosevka is stupendously customizable, so I thought I’d see if I could get something close to Input’s styles.
...An analogy occurred to me this evening as I was thinking about programming language design:
Choosing good keywords and function names is like picking a good font; the ideas conveyed may be the same, but a change can drastically impact legibility and enjoyment of use.
PHP does a spectacular job of providing a bad example. It’s like the Comic Sans of programming languages. Now there are many reasons why PHP is not a good language—I’d like to investigate this particular aspect of its design here briefly.
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