I still don't get the 'large print' trend. Yes, I've read all the so-called 'pro's', but the content still looks ridiculously sparse to me.
I find a website with 'old-fashioned' 12px or lower text is like me holding my iPhone at arm's length. Don't get it.
Curious as to your monitor size/res and whether you use the computer leaning forwards/backwards. I'm a 28yr old with good eyesight, I lean back in my chair.
Also wonder if a lot of hackers are biased towards small text because they're used to their IDEs/terminals which default to pretty tiny fonts.
Don't know about 'hacker bias', but yes, I'm a dev that's grown up on xterms (on huge monitors), and use IDE's fullscreen at fontsizes a lot smaller than those of a medium blog (now _that_ would be a waste of screen space ;))
I see your point, but imho font sizes like OPs feel like a large print edition book held about a foot in front of my face. I guess it's mostly a matter of taste.
It's the default in browsers and what the 'normal' keyword means yes, but I don't think it's a good default, any more than the default font-size is. I think 1.5 is a pretty common recommendation in the world of typography. I don't really have any good references to back that up, but if you Google '1.5 line height best practice' there's some reading to be had (realise that's a highly scientific approach)!
>> I feel like I'm reading a children's book with 2 sentences per page.
Is that a problem? Perhaps they got it right with children's books. :) Is it comfortable on your eyes?