How do you read?
time to read 2 min | 268 words

I read a lot, and I found this post by Jeff very interesting. He talks about a research made about difference in reading speed with fonts, and that the Courier, the default programming font in Windows, was the second worst font of them all.

Why is it that developers usually like to develop using mono-spaced fonts, then?

I think that it has to do with how we read. I find that I usually don't read the letters, I read a word. And I often don't bother with looking at the spelling or the way it's pronounced (one of the reasons that I sometimes speak strange English). I look at the shape of the word, and go on to the next one. It's worse with names, since I usualy just grab the first recognizable sequence and then carry on. I read a great book once, and was raving about it to a friend of mine. But when ask how the hero was called, I said something like: "Um, it starts with a Bu-something".

In code, I often look for sequences that repeat, and I try very hard to make sure that I never need to read large amount of code at one time. (Large being anything above ~30 lines of well spaced and clear code). Monospace font make sure that I can be even more lazy, since everything always looks the same, and I can line things up so they would look nice when I scan them again.

How do you read?

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