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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font, I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10 years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now.

Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is the step of installing it. I would just rather pick a font from my default OS font choices.

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I agree. Most modern OS monospace fonts (Consolas, Monaco, Ubuntu Mono) are more than enough for any kind of programming. I don't really see the benefit of going out and trying new fonts. IMHO font size and color highlighting (color schemes?) play a much bigger role in making my work on a text editor be faster/better.

Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...

I agree. I'm one of those people who is very picky about their fonts, and I can't recall ever paying over $10 for a font for my own, personal, non-design related needs. In my case, it's due to the fact that I have poor eyesight, so having the right font can really make a big difference, but there are probably thousands of free/low-cost options out there.

It was hard to find a monospace font that looked great at larger sizes (14pt), but in the end I settled on Luxi Mono (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono). It actually doesn't look that great in their previews, but renders much more smoothly in my editor. This makes me think that the operating system/rendering engine probably plays a bigger role.

Remember that most of the time, people don't know what they want until they see it.

Yeah, I have tested this hypothesis on myself. I have tried lots of fonts touted as the best for programming and found exactly zero difference. Time wasted, chalked up to experience.

I think that anyone considering a donation should at least try the freely available fonts to see whether they make any difference.

Why are you so determined to damn this effort? Can you imagine launching a weekend web startup project and having someone on here to look elsewhere before considering a donation?

People starting businesses come here to be encouraged, and this guy isn't doing anything wrong. In fact, I wish more creatives would consider these sorts of alternative approaches to patronage.

> Why are you so determined to damn this effort?

It's important to give people honest and clear feedback. By blindly encouraging them, you are doing them a disservice. Perhaps he can fine-tune his effort. Perhaps his talents are best applied elsewhere. You simply don't know. If his skin isn't thick enough to accept honest criticism, he shouldn't be starting or doing anything on his own. Honest feedback is important.

Sorry, perhaps it was my fault by starting on the criticism. It was just meant to be an honest observation.

I think the font looks great and I appreciate the effort and time it took to create this font. However I see it more as an art piece. Just like an artist might have painstakingly created a body of work for 5 years, just the effort put into it, makes it impressive. To someone (a collector, a gallery) the piece might be worth $200,000, to me though, it might be or worth $0, just because I don't like it or I am shopping for utilitarian things at the moment. "Would this piece help me code faster?" kind of reasoning. So maybe it is just the wrong market.

There might also be a luxury market out there for fonts, someone who has the latest and greatest set-up and has deep pockets who just needs something extra ? A book publisher? An OS vendor?

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