Courier is not dead, Brandon!

I had an interesting conversation with @bgrasley recently.  He sent out an innocent enough query via Twitter:

What’s your favourite font for coding? I’m thinking about this one: “Source Code Pro” by Adobe | Font Squirrel http://t.co/auvYk4jinH #free

— Brandon Grasley (@bgrasley) May 29, 2014

My response?  Courier.

That does inspire me for the balance of this post.  In reality, I guess, modern computers and typefaces have more easily read alternatives.  But we programming longtimers really appreciate Courier and it’s mono-spaced format.  Back in the day, design layout was important and each character took the same amount of space on the screen, whether it needs it or not.

Primitive (by today’s standards) graphics were also best designed with this font.

Later in the day, I read Stephen Downes’ OLDaily where he pointed to a github project Untrusted which hijacked my interest for the rest of the evening.  It’s a “Javascript adventure game” and it’s all in code, javascript code.  The goal?  You modify the Javascript code so that your character can escape.  The puzzle:

and the code

surely reminded me of Courier.  Looking at the source reveals that the author used Droid Sans but it sure looks close.

Thankfully, it’s not Comic Sans.  However, I may change my choice of programming font.  I kind of like this one.

Regardless, this is a wonderful adventure puzzle.  You solve the puzzle by modifying the code in the right pane, execute your modified code, and then play the result in the left pane.

If you’re looking to up your programming experiences in the classroom and, certainly very appropriate as an ICS activity, check this out.  It will keep you thinking for quite a while.

Thanks, Brandon for this font walk.  It was fun reminiscing. 

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