[dreeves]

I have a different answer than all the other replies: for me it's just about fitting as much of my code on the screen as possible. The standard xterm font is nice and compact. For every other font I've tried, if you adjust it so that it matches or beats the xterm font in terms of number of lines of code that fit on your screen and number of editor windows you can fit side by side, they are not readable. Like pretty much literally not readable. (I'm eager to be corrected if I'm wrong -- I may not have tried every font out there, but I've tried a lot of them.)

Therefore the xterm font (FixedMedium6x13) wins. But getting exactly that font in other editors like it is in xterms is not so simple:

For linux, see this comment in the current discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584147

For osx, see my question, also in that thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2586300