I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols per line onto your screen, it's a sign that there's a coding style problem! Lines simply should be short enough to not require horizontal compression.
I keep my code below the 80 column mark, as is common. For me, the reason I like the more narrow Iosevka is because it lets me have more split buffers open on the same monitor. With Iosevka I can have 3 splits with a little over 80 columns each, other fonts only let me have two. I never noticed a decrease in readability but I've been using Iosevka for a very long time now, perhaps it's time to try out a wider font and see if it's worth it.
I like the narrower font so I can fit two side-by-side files with full 120 character width each on a regular 16:9 display. Iosevka is likely my forever font. I find it both beautiful and fit for purpose; I couldn't ask for more.
Re: "lines should be short." I prefer my code font to work even for bad code. It's not always my code that I'm looking at!
Ever tried editing two files side by side on a 13-14" screen? Good luck without a narrow font or tiny font sizes. Meanwhile I find narrow fonts just as readable, so for me it's an easy choice.
I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols per line onto your screen, it's a sign that there's a coding style problem! Lines simply should be short enough to not require horizontal compression.
Obviously, YMMV, to each their own, etc.