Perhaps I'm missing why this is desired for fonts in general, but my tendency when selecting one for editing code is to use one with a smaller vertical line spacing to minimise spacing between lines (and therefore fit more lines on screen).
Why do people appear to prefer the opposite (massive distance between lines)? I'm currently using Input Mono, not because I like it specifically as a font, but because it's relatively narrow, and because its vertical spacing is smaller than many others.
Navigation tools in code editors are generally good enough that I'll sacrifice information density for readability (i.e. I can get where I want to go fairly easily, so it's not really essential that it's on screen). Also the methods in the codebase I'm working in are nearly always < 10 lines long, so the 'unit' of code I need to see at once comfortably fits no matter how much vertical space is used.
Sure, I guess my question is around why people would consider a line in a sea of space more legible than the same x-height font with less space below it.
I guess I could have an unusual take on this, but I find a lot of mono fonts seem to have massive inter-line spacing. So much so that their appearance is almost jarring to me. I find it disruptive to read. If I had issues with the legibility of a font then I'd increase its size, not the spacing between lines.
As mentioned earlier though, I guess I'm an odd-one-out here, I'm seeking to understand how/why my view here is unusual.
