In reply to Does anybody really build faces like this anymore?:
And that is different from trading your creativity for Bèzier curves how?
(...) one needs, at least, ellipses, in addition to circles and straight lines, to have an adequately general set of primitives to easily construct a wide variety of typefaces.
It's true you could theoretically get along without Bèzier curves, using only arcs to approximate your curve (like one esentially does with Bézier curves). Not even ellipses are necessary.
My point: from the practical point of view it makes no sense. Everything that restricts a designer technically in his creativity, everything that makes a class of shapes more likely than other, is mistaken as soon as it is presented as an ‘aesthetic method’. Just saying, more than often this idea is interpreted as a suggestion to a specific way of drawing. Like someone who looks at Romain de Roi's drawing and says: “So this is it! It was circles and ovals all this time! And I've been struggling with this weird Bèzier thingies for so long...”.