I learned Glyphs 3 a couple months ago through a type design course. I put into practice a lot what was taught, but find myself doing something radically different from what I see other people doing.
I almost exclusively use strokes to build out all characters. I find it’s easier to get even looking shapes, rather than drawing the weighted shape by hand. I also find it’s more precise when creating multiple weights: I simply change the weight of the stroke and make some simple height and width adjustments.
After I’ve built out my font using strokes, I expand, then adjust the shape into something more finalized. Here’s an example:
I’ve watched a lot of videos on Glyphs on Youtube and haven’t seen anyone using this method. Is there a reason why? Are there any major downsides to using strokes initially for everything? Is there a reason people don’t do this?
This is possible for certain simple designs, yes, but with time you’ll most probably find yourself to be a lot faster with just drawing the outlines yourself. The fine-tuning you mention is 99% of the work anyway.
You can check out lttrink.com, that might interest you.
Also, one thing to mention about the outlines you are showing in your screenshot: make sure to place your nodes on vertical/horizontal extremes, if possible.
Additionally to what Sebastian said about extremes, you also need to check out an inflections on these two segments because such self-intersections change the direction of the path.
Here’s the tutorial that explains it better: Drawing good paths | Glyphs
