Watch the documentary. Helvetica is like air, or water. It's the font when you choose don't want to choose a font, because It says absolutely nothing.

That's an opinion, not fact.

I'd say it's closer to vanilla: So versatile and distinct that it was elevated to ubiquity. Your average person would have a hard time telling you when helvetica was created or when vanilla ice cream was created. That's an achievement.

That's an opinion, not fact.

Never claimed it to be one.

In theory. In reality it's got a ton of cultural baggage.

Ubiquity is itself a message. Each font has a personality that effects the impression of a work. So there's no escaping a work sending no message at all, except by not meeting deadlines. :)

I never really understood the fascination with typography beyond a readability standard to be honest, but that's why i'm not a designer.

Do you code in comic sans?

I don't code in Comic Sans. I code in whatever the default font is for my editor.

As an experiment, I just tried shifting the editor's font to Comic Sans and writing some code. Did really feel any different to me. Obviously it didn't change any unit tests, but I didn't feel any subjective differences, either.

Oddly enough, since I didn't write down what the default font was, I'll probably be coding in Comic Sans for the foreseeable future. If this becomes an issue, I guess that I'll switch fonts, but, at the moment, I still don't understand what the big deal is.

For the record, I'm not trying to be snarky. I was really hoping that switching my editor to comic sans would enlighten me on the difference between using a "good" font and a "bad" font, but I still don't see it.

You said you only care about readability. But readability is one of the only reasons we code in "monospaced" fonts, because although they don't look as nice, it's very difficult to confuse capital I's with l's and 0's with O's.

Also surely you get the sense of informalness that comes from Comic Sans? Do you at least understand why it looks silly on something like a "DANGER, HIGH VOLTAGE" sign

>> You said you only care about readability.

Nope, he never said that. I did. And I use monospace fonts.

I understand the formality that is conveyed; I just don't care for that layer of information myself. I'd find it silly if I saw monospace typography at Disneyland or a children's book -- but from a readability standpoint I think i'd likely be impressed.

So you're happy to code in a non-monospaced font. I can't help but think you're being wilfully ignorant... or just being a contrarian. Either way, good luck.

Engineers tend to view fonts thru an engineering lens, instead of cultural or aesthetic points of view. So, often the number one feature of a font for us is symbol clarity. How easily can I distinguish between a 0 and O, and 1 and l, with no context (a test which most fonts fail). Many typographers or font enthusiasts don't care much about those distinctions because they can rely on context (programmers cannot).

So, many engineers I've come in contact with care deeply about their fonts, but view much of what happens in typography as a distraction.