Programmers work with text all day. We think of that text we work with as the subject matter very often and that sparks lively debates.

There could also be an element of tradition; prestigious institutions and individuals, like Bell Labs, Donald Knuth and Apple, have devoted significant resources to typesetting and publishing, so an appreciation for typography could be seen as a marker of sophistication from that.

And lastly we must often have some working knowledge of the design of user interfaces at some point in our careers, and you need to have some notions of typography to be effective at that.

Something that converts abstract glyphs to bezier curves and projects that to your eyes deserves attention and care. Typefaces bring the abstract idea of what a glyph is semiologically, to the physical 2D space. Made up of bezier curves, the have to abide by conventions but have considerable room in expressivity as well as design intent for a specific purpose. Typefaces are fascinating and the process of designing them is underrated and unappreciated by public at large. Billions of people rely on them, they're everywhere and you interact with typefaces all day, everyday.

HN likes beautiful code.

Because many HN readers are developers, and developers deal with characters all the time