The most expensive coding font for free? • Hacker News Board

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#81

Post by ajross » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

hipsterelitist wrote: post #7

4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.

The amount isn't too far off I don't think. I'm no font designer, but four man years (including overhead, etc...) isn't insane, nor is that figure off for expected salary.

That said, I'm very mixed on this kind of "ransomware" development. If you want to share, share. If you don't, don't. But front-loading the costs of your proprietary software product on people who actually want free software is borderline unethical, IMHO. Obviously people are free to pay if they want to, but if you really want to support free development there are better targets.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#82

Post by mrgoldenbrown » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

Does anybody have any data on how many people program in greek, cyrillic, or hebrew characters? I suspect that 90% of programs that are out there could be written with 10% of the glyphs that he is proposing to hand hint. Why not focus on those and reduce the price accordingly?

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#83

Post by sp332 » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 4:51 PM UTC

natesm wrote: post #65

drv wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you write int* foo, bar; and the troubles begin...

Ah, that's exactly the thing I try to avoid. Presumably you're going to use those variables, right? So, unless there's truly an issue (conditional assignment that is too complex for a ternary) why not declare them at the point of use? C99 lets us do that, there's no reason to keep the C89 habits. Meaning: int* foo = whatever; // do some stuff with foo, now we need bar int* bar = whatever; Outside of a for loop, I wou…

But it still looks cleaner to put your variables first and your code after. It's like in a play, you mention which characters are going to be in the scene before you get to the dialogue.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#84

Post by calpaterson » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #10

libria wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I think a 220k income would be taxed at ~40% state + federal. And yes, that does suck.

In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now". At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.

I'm pretty sure this practice has not been stopped.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#85

Post by omarchowdhury » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

achompas wrote: post #80

omarchowdhury wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appropriate" reward would be the reward the market decides you get, not what you hope for.

You can't just hand-wave away market inefficiencies here. The man's fonts are being pirated--does that mean they have an intrinsic value of $0?

No, it means people are not willing to pay for it.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#86

Post by chadnickbok » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

800 days working without knowing whether or not there was actually a way to make any money?

Lets _not_ talk about whether or not this will work. Lets talk about how this is absolutely not, under any circumstances, a productive way to spend one's time.

187 people bought the previous version of this font. Do some sales projections, estimate market size, review the competition (such as the Ubuntu monospace fonts), talk to the existing customers about the features they actually _use_ everyday (hebrew characters? really?), and even I can conclude that the market isn't going to be viable for the given business plan.

I'm going to call Eric Ries, and ask him nicely if he can send you a copy of his book. Cause' you my friend, are doing it _wrong_ .

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#87

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

Fabrizio, have you thought about pitching this to Apple? Seriously. I personally don't get it, but it seems like the type of thing that Jobs would appreciate (if he liked it) and say it was worth the money. Ask Apple if they'd buy it for XCode, so all Apple devs could have it.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#88

Post by eropple » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #63

natesm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously personal preference and opinion and all of that, but that's the whole point of discussion, so: if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } vs. if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } To me, the first one is chaotic. It's not so bad like that, but throw in a loop (as well as the external function declaration) and it's a complete mess. The second one is orderly. Block…

subjective. control flow complexity is equivalent. stop talking about it.

Heaven forfend people discuss different ways to view a problem.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#89

Post by to3m » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

stdbrouw wrote: post #6

There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't know why I should bother. People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that a monospaced font doesn't need. The one thing this font seems to add is that it is s…

I can't be the only one that likes the pixels, surely!

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#90

Post by gurkendoktor » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

omarchowdhury wrote: post #85

achompas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just hand-wave away market inefficiencies here. The man's fonts are being pirated--does that mean they have an intrinsic value of $0?

No, it means people are not willing to pay for it.

Sorry for being anecdotal, but I've often seen people buy something after failing to pirate it. But whether somebody has uploaded a font for illegal downloading or not should not be able change its fair market value IMHO.

In reality it does, and that is why the market's reaction may be just as unfair as up-front payments. (And I think your initial reply was related to fairness, correct me if I'm wrong.)