> Google Sans Mono was created in 2020 to support contexts that needed fixed-width characters for editorial design, at medium and large text sizes. Despite this, it soon got its first big product integration, replacing Roboto Mono in Google Chat. The only problem? Developers hated it.
[...]
> Recognizing this critical need, a dedicated effort was launched to craft Google Sans Code, a monospaced typeface specifically designed to make code more readable. This involved thorough research into the 20 most common programming languages and how developers interact with code, aiming to make the new coding typeface more visually appealing while reducing the ambiguity of similar-looking letterforms. Based on these insights, Google tasked the Universal Thirst foundry to meticulously focus on specific letters, numbers, and operators to meet these requirements. The result is an eminently readable and surprisingly playful typeface.
> Google Sans Code launched as an open-source font in 2025, and is the typeface used to display code in Gemini.
Curly braces can be really hard to distinguish from parens because they appear in the same sort of place in e.g. JS, and IDEs and highlighters often render them in stupid low-contrast colours. I hate it aesethetically, but I get the usability need.
Hmm, my first reaction was the same as yours. But I have quite bad eyesight and looking at the "regular 400 at 16px" example on the page reminded me that I definitely sometimes find myself squinting trying to work out whether a character is a parenthesis or a brace (Droid Sans Mono). So I suppose it'd probably be quite helpful to have a brace that's very visually distinct from parenthesis even if it's not particularly pretty on its own.
Squishing it down to <12px I can see that problem, even when compared to other good coding fonts like Jetbrains Mono or a font designed for readability like Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono / Next.
Definitely was too quick with my judgement. Still, it just looks really out of place at bigger font sizes and it makes me wonder if there isn't a more elegant solution out there.
> Google Sans Mono was created in 2020 to support contexts that needed fixed-width characters for editorial design, at medium and large text sizes. Despite this, it soon got its first big product integration, replacing Roboto Mono in Google Chat. The only problem? Developers hated it.
[...]
> Recognizing this critical need, a dedicated effort was launched to craft Google Sans Code, a monospaced typeface specifically designed to make code more readable. This involved thorough research into the 20 most common programming languages and how developers interact with code, aiming to make the new coding typeface more visually appealing while reducing the ambiguity of similar-looking letterforms. Based on these insights, Google tasked the Universal Thirst foundry to meticulously focus on specific letters, numbers, and operators to meet these requirements. The result is an eminently readable and surprisingly playful typeface.
> Google Sans Code launched as an open-source font in 2025, and is the typeface used to display code in Gemini.