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why would someone with 40+ years of math experience have such a hard time learning a new notation?
by catshirt 9y ago
why would someone with 40+ years of math experience have such a hard time learning a new notation?
- bjt 9y agoAssuming they have something that already works for them, lack of motivation.
- LunaSea 9y agoBecause knowledge about maths is independent of computer and programming literacy.
- catshirt 9y agoif we use a liberal definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's just as much a requisite for math as it is TeX. if we use a conservative definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's not a requisite for either. markup languages are not programming languages. most people have some familiarity with some markup language.
- gizmo385 9y agoI don't think their assertion is that someone with 40+ years of math experience would have difficulty learning new notation, it's that LaTeX is composed of a lot more than straightfoward notation. LaTeX can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. While it's basic math notation is quite fantastic, it's the basic document formatting that I think would give most people trouble when learning.
- CJefferson 9y agoBecause the error messages from latex are truly awful, even just putting an underscore or less than in plain text is painful.