This may seem a bit controversial, but I want to encourage you to fit less information on a screen. As we are, developers, often tend to do right the opposite.

I’m talking about font size in your IDE or text editor, whatever you prefer.

12, 13, 14 pixels are too small

Developers around me mostly use font sizes from 12 to 14 pixels.

Those are very small fonts for a people who stare at letters most of the day. Even for ones with perfect sight, which is a rare case in our profession, I would really suggest increasing font sizes.

You’re making pretty big effort processing those symbols and you definitely don’t want to have any extra strain to read them.

Bigger font makes a real difference

I personally switched from 12px to 16px about a month ago and I feel the difference literally every single day I go home from work. I feel much less tired, my head is not “heavy” as usual — feelings which I thought are normal after a day in front of a screen. They’re not.

Here is a side-by-side view of my IDE with old and new configuration.