The default now is that no one uses Metafont, so it doesn't really matter what it outputs. AFAIK, (almost) no one outputs dvi files, or uses whatever the old f

The default now is that no one uses Metafont, so it doesn't really matter what it outputs. AFAIK, (almost) no one outputs dvi files, or uses whatever the old font choosing mechanism was, either. The Computer Modern fonts are still pretty commonly used, and probably look somewhat dated, but it's not that difficult to use other fonts, especially if you choose a TeX variant like XeTeX. I think Metafont tried to address a lot of things that were really only interesting to type designers, who turn out to be largely allergic to designing fonts in a text editor. Some of the ideas were revisited in the Adobe Multiple Master fonts, now extinct, and I believe there's a new version of (fonts with axes in addition to size).