3 ms·

Feels like your response could be abbreviated for clarity: >Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it [...] In the end, I guess I don’t r

Feels like your response could be abbreviated for clarity: >Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it [...] In the end, I guess I don’t really care

caslon 3y ago
What's wrong with that? A person isn't obligated to have an open source maintainer care about their opinions on where their project should go, even if it can be helpful for them to consider objections. Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad."
- romwell 3y ago
  >What's wrong with that? Going out of one's way to tell to a person that wasn't talking to you in the first place to say that you don't care about what they said. >Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad." You may notice that the criticism is written in several well-structured and reasoned paragraphs, and not that one line. Perhaps your summary doesn't reflect what was said.
aeturnum 3y ago
It's a shame this is all you got from the response because I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting: >Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts. You're right that it doesn't follow all of the guidelines to maximize readability! There are other fonts that do that but mine does not. That's not what I'm interested in and it doesn't bother me - I find it to be perfectly readable. I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is understanding that guidelines are always about maximizing certain qualities of something and that it's generally ok to choose not to focus on those things. Unless your customers are a captive population of some sort, generally we can all make whatever thing we want and let people who like it pick it up.
- romwell 3y ago
  >I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting <...> Your rewriting of the comment says exactly the same thing it did before. My assessment of it remains the same. I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it" in response to criticism of work that you: 1. Publish online for public use; 2. Describe as "the best font for programming"; 3. Set up a Patreon page to collect money for. Note that the criticism was not addressed to the designer in the first place. The designer went out of their way to find and dismiss criticism with a non-informative "I guess I just don't care". The critic explained why they strongly feel that e.g. curisve italics aren't a good feature for a programming font (moreso described as "the best" one). The designer added no context or insight into why they think differently other than "I don't care", which is, frankly, offputing. It is also disingenuous to sum up the criticism as "does not follow all guidelines for readability". The criticism wasn't about following guidelines; it was about the font being hard to read. Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine". We are not that far from this scenario here.
  - aeturnum 3y ago
    > realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it" It seems really important to clarify what you will and won't do in your projects. Setting aside the tone of the response - are you saying that people should respond to critique only with silence or agreement? Many open source projects could expand functionality in one direction or another and the fact that the team is not interested in particular directions is often valuable information. >Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine". I think this a great example to expand on because...it obviously depends! If you are turning in an essay and your teacher can't read it - you are going to get a zero. The font just needs to transmit the content and if it fails at that it's no good. But then you did not "[follow] all the guidelines" in producing the work because legibility was required. On the other hand, unless the student is lying, then whatever they are producing text for doesn't need to be legible. They are free to make whatever text best serves their goals. Getting the feedback that it's not legible is important - but if legibility isn't a requirement then it's up to the author to decide how to use that note. For me, the question is one of the venue of the "work": Who will be forced to deal with it? In this case the answer seems clearly to be: "no one." We are all free (or not) to use this font. It is not being used to make signage or publish books (and if it was it would be the responsibility of the authors of those works). The author has no responsibility to live up to any particular guidelines because they're doing what they please (and presenting it as such). People are allowed to think anything is "best" for anything! I might think Comic Sans is the best font for programming (though I imagine few people would agree). I will also say that this example differs in that the complaint was not illegibility. crazygringo said "You can read it, but it simply takes more effort."

Feels like your response could be abbreviated for clarity: >Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it [...] In the end, I guess I don’t really care

caslon 3y ago

What's wrong with that? A person isn't obligated to have an open source maintainer care about their opinions on where their project should go, even if it can be helpful for them to consider objections. Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad."

romwell 3y ago
>What's wrong with that? Going out of one's way to tell to a person that wasn't talking to you in the first place to say that you don't care about what they said. >Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad." You may notice that the criticism is written in several well-structured and reasoned paragraphs, and not that one line. Perhaps your summary doesn't reflect what was said.

aeturnum 3y ago

It's a shame this is all you got from the response because I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting: >Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts. You're right that it doesn't follow all of the guidelines to maximize readability! There are other fonts that do that but mine does not. That's not what I'm interested in and it doesn't bother me - I find it to be perfectly readable. I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is understanding that guidelines are always about maximizing certain qualities of something and that it's generally ok to choose not to focus on those things. Unless your customers are a captive population of some sort, generally we can all make whatever thing we want and let people who like it pick it up.

romwell 3y ago
>I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting <...> Your rewriting of the comment says exactly the same thing it did before. My assessment of it remains the same. I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it" in response to criticism of work that you: 1. Publish online for public use; 2. Describe as "the best font for programming"; 3. Set up a Patreon page to collect money for. Note that the criticism was not addressed to the designer in the first place. The designer went out of their way to find and dismiss criticism with a non-informative "I guess I just don't care". The critic explained why they strongly feel that e.g. curisve italics aren't a good feature for a programming font (moreso described as "the best" one). The designer added no context or insight into why they think differently other than "I don't care", which is, frankly, offputing. It is also disingenuous to sum up the criticism as "does not follow all guidelines for readability". The criticism wasn't about following guidelines; it was about the font being hard to read. Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine". We are not that far from this scenario here.
- aeturnum 3y ago
  > realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it" It seems really important to clarify what you will and won't do in your projects. Setting aside the tone of the response - are you saying that people should respond to critique only with silence or agreement? Many open source projects could expand functionality in one direction or another and the fact that the team is not interested in particular directions is often valuable information. >Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine". I think this a great example to expand on because...it obviously depends! If you are turning in an essay and your teacher can't read it - you are going to get a zero. The font just needs to transmit the content and if it fails at that it's no good. But then you did not "[follow] all the guidelines" in producing the work because legibility was required. On the other hand, unless the student is lying, then whatever they are producing text for doesn't need to be legible. They are free to make whatever text best serves their goals. Getting the feedback that it's not legible is important - but if legibility isn't a requirement then it's up to the author to decide how to use that note. For me, the question is one of the venue of the "work": Who will be forced to deal with it? In this case the answer seems clearly to be: "no one." We are all free (or not) to use this font. It is not being used to make signage or publish books (and if it was it would be the responsibility of the authors of those works). The author has no responsibility to live up to any particular guidelines because they're doing what they please (and presenting it as such). People are allowed to think anything is "best" for anything! I might think Comic Sans is the best font for programming (though I imagine few people would agree). I will also say that this example differs in that the complaint was not illegibility. crazygringo said "You can read it, but it simply takes more effort."