What is Reddit's opinion of Shirtmaking: Developing Skills For Fine Sewing?

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Helpful article, especially for suit jackets and dress shoes. However they didn't talk too too much about cotton dress shirts. The tip about stitches per inch on the side-seams is good, but there's a lot more you can look for too (these are my notes from David Coffin's Shirtmaking "bible"):

• the best cottons are Pima (good), Egyptian (better), and Sea Island (best). they all have individual fibers (called staples) that are much longer compared to other cottons, which allows them to be spun into finer, smoother yarns.
• fold the fabric over itself, and hold it up to the light. the less fuzziness you can see at the edge of the fold, the better. it indicates smoother and longer-stapled yarns.
• fine shirting cotton often has a subtle gloss, or sheen, which rivals silk. not all high-end fabrics have it, but if present, it's usually an indicator of quality.
• the best cotton shirting fabrics are imported from Switzerland, England, Italy, and Japan. this is because most mills in other countries were not designed to work with ultra-fine threads (note: the book's copyright is 1993, so it's possible this is outdated info)

Elements of the "classic" dress shirt:

• 100% cotton, 2- or 3-ply thread (for example, a "2x2 120" fabric means the warp and weft are both 2-ply 120-size threads, where thread sizes range from about 20 (coarse) to 200 (ultra-fine))
• a one-piece back with a narrow one- or two-piece double yoke (about 2.5" to 3" wide at the shoulders). often there will be knife pleats over the shoulder blades, or especially common on American shirts, a centered box pleat in the small of the back.
• a 1.5" wide front-facing, a separate piece of fabric from the shirt-front, top-stitched at 1/4" along each side. edge-stitching or no stitching on this instead of at 1/4" is a big tell of cheapness. (this is the piece with the button holes)
• a rolled-hem along the bottom
• flat-felled armscye and side seams
• one-piece sleeves, with plackets and barrel cuffs or french cuffs (the placket and cuffs are a good place to look for indicators of shady quality; they're tough to sew). barrel cuffs with square or 45 degree corners are often an indicator of lesser-quality (because tight rounded curves are really difficult to sew evenly - but sometimes unrounded is just the style the designer chose).
• a collar on a separate stand (also a good place to look for indicators of shady quality; the collar is probably the hardest part of a shirt to sew)

Good shirts can deviate from these rules, but those are the key elements that go into what makes up a "classic" dress shirt.