[pavlov]

Computer Modern was designed by Donald Knuth who is a computer scientist, not a typographer. He created CM as a demo of his parametric font engine Metafont.

So it’s fair to say that CM is a tech demo, not a professionally designed font.

Font designer Jonathan Hoefler has commented on Metafont: “Knuth's idea that letters start with skeletal forms is flawed.” When the fundamental design premise is wrong, you get something like Computer Modern.

[jfk13]

Computer Modern isn't primarily designed using "skeletal forms"; that's one way of using Metafont, but not heavily used for the CM faces.

While it's true that Knuth is a computer scientist rather than a typographer, he has worked pretty closely with typographers. And in creating CM, he relied heavily on pre-existing (and professionally designed) Monotype fonts as a model. (See for example https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/monotype-modern, which looks quite reminiscent of CM.)

Computer Modern is not to many people's taste today, partly because it doesn't reproduce all that well at low resolutions, but also, I think, because it is an older style that is now out of fashion and not commonly seen.

(The term "Modern" for this type of design dates from the 1800s -- see https://www.toptal.com/designers/typography/typeface-classif... -- so it's hardly surprising that "modern" faces like Bodoni or Monotype Modern or CM feel rather old-fashioned today!)

[agalunar]

[It's also worth pointing out that Computer Modern was not created as a demo, and in fact, it's almost the other way round. He wanted better typography for The Art of Computer Programming, and created TeX and Computer Modern as means to that end (and created Metafont in order to do that).]

[Chris_Newton]

It’s also worth remembering that CM was designed with some very specific goals in mind in terms of clearly distinguishing a much broader character set than was the norm at the time, even at very small sizes. It is still arguably the most successful font family ever created within its intended niche. Very few font families can be used to typeset serious mathematics as legibly as CM, and even then, few authors will make the effort to set everything with the attention to detail Knuth has.

[agalunar]

> Knuth's idea that letters start with skeletal forms is flawed.

This is a critique of Metafont, not Computer Modern. And interestingly, Knuth et al eventually reached the same conclusion; as I recall, most letters in Computer Modern are drawn as outlines and then filled in (instead of being drawn in a few strokes with a broader pen).

I think Hoefler phrased his comment well; the idea is flawed, not necessarily wrong outright. Letterforms derive from historical constructions: the uppercase roman letters from Roman square capitals, which were carved; lowercase from humanist miniscules (from carolingian miniscules), written by pen; &c. So in some sense, some letters do start with skeletal forms, but: when letters were adapted to print, the punches (the "master copies") for letters were made by engraving and by using counterpunches (reusable tools that create particular shapes of negative space in the letter). And that's where metal (and digital) type comes from; pens and styli are more distant ancestors.

[I'd highly recommend the book Counterpunch by Fred Smeijers on this topic!]

[Also, it's fun to look at some of the Arrighi italics from the early 16th century. They are astonishingly modern – compare it to, say, a heavier weight of Minion italic, one of the most popular typefaces used in books today!]

Anyway, on to Computer Modern. It's not my favorite Scotch roman, but take a look at engineering and mathematics books from the 1940s and 1950s for comparison. I have several books from the McGraw-Hill Electrical and Electronic Engineering Series, and they're really, really lovely, and the type is eminently readable on the printed page; here's a (somewhat poor) scan of one of them:

https://archive.org/details/Vacuum_Tube_and_Semiconductor_El...