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18 years ago I was submitting a proof I wrote in word as an undergrad for my Econ grad school application. My dad (engineering prof) saw it, and said: “here’s w

18 years ago I was submitting a proof I wrote in word as an undergrad for my Econ grad school application. My dad (engineering prof) saw it, and said: “here’s what I do when I get asked to referee a paper in word.” And he threw it away. He rewrote the proof in Latex and I’m still using that doc as the skeleton for all my work 18 years later. Like him, I cry myself to sleep at night for not being awesome enough to use TeX, but instead using the layman TeX, Latex.

analog31 7y ago
Pro tip: Write in Word but use the LaTeX font. You get the speed of Word and the virtue signaling of LaTeX. Win Win. This is just tongue in cheek, of course. I wrote my thesis in 1993, and in that time period, my anecdotal observation was that the students who used LaTeX generally took longer to finish. Today, I use MathJax inside of markdown, and don't even use word processing very much. Industry has gotten less formal. Most text is edited in an e-mail editor with screen shots pasted in. The main use of word processing is documents that nobody will ever read, such as functional procedures and HR proclamations.
- sjy 7y ago
  What industry are you talking about? Email doesn't scale to the size of a detailed report; I've been criticised for sending 'wall of text' emails that were barely over 1,000 words. I'm sure you weren't entirely serious, but if 'nobody ever reads' documents longer than this, that is concerning.
  - analog31 7y ago
    I work in industry, and am amazed by the decline in use of things like detailed reports. Nobody reads any more. Someone might produce an in depth study of something, and present a summary as a PowerPoint, but that becomes the only documentary output of the work. If someone needs to know more detail, they go and ask the person. If the person get run over a bus, the knowledge is lost. Even before this trend, there was a lot of documentation that was never intended to be read. Huge piles of what I call "ornamental" documentation, e.g., in fulfillment of ISO-9000 or other regulatory obligations.
- stordoff 7y ago
  > I wrote my thesis in 1993, and in that time period, my anecdotal observation was that the students who used LaTeX generally took longer to finish. How much of that is down to the choice of tool, and how much is down to people choosing LaTeX being more likely to be more exacting about their work overall? I think it's difficult to a say. (FWIW, I started my thesis in LaTeX, then gave up and used Word because it was faster - but only because I didn't know LaTeX prior)
  - analog31 7y ago
    I'm sure it was the latter, like you say. For one thing, the computer technology you used depended on your specialty, but there were also different "cultures" within each specialty regarding the thesis. The high-energy physics students had access to Unix workstations and used LaTeX. Most of the other students had whatever old MS-DOS boxes they could afford, commercial quality typesetting was impossible, so nobody demanded it. My advisor didn't even send typeset copy to journals, because he figured they would just retype it anyway. Acceptance of manuscripts in computer readable format was just on the horizon. There was a strong tendency to get emotionally attached to the physical document -- it was the pinnacle of your career after all -- and to get wrapped up in the aesthetics. I avoided that, partially because the clock was ticking. My boss had accepted a job at another university, and I had to clear out by a certain date. Nothing sharpens your mind like a semi truck coming to haul your experiment away.

analog31 7y ago

Pro tip: Write in Word but use the LaTeX font. You get the speed of Word and the virtue signaling of LaTeX. Win Win. This is just tongue in cheek, of course. I wrote my thesis in 1993, and in that time period, my anecdotal observation was that the students who used LaTeX generally took longer to finish. Today, I use MathJax inside of markdown, and don't even use word processing very much. Industry has gotten less formal. Most text is edited in an e-mail editor with screen shots pasted in. The main use of word processing is documents that nobody will ever read, such as functional procedures and HR proclamations.

sjy 7y ago
What industry are you talking about? Email doesn't scale to the size of a detailed report; I've been criticised for sending 'wall of text' emails that were barely over 1,000 words. I'm sure you weren't entirely serious, but if 'nobody ever reads' documents longer than this, that is concerning.
- analog31 7y ago
  I work in industry, and am amazed by the decline in use of things like detailed reports. Nobody reads any more. Someone might produce an in depth study of something, and present a summary as a PowerPoint, but that becomes the only documentary output of the work. If someone needs to know more detail, they go and ask the person. If the person get run over a bus, the knowledge is lost. Even before this trend, there was a lot of documentation that was never intended to be read. Huge piles of what I call "ornamental" documentation, e.g., in fulfillment of ISO-9000 or other regulatory obligations.
stordoff 7y ago
> I wrote my thesis in 1993, and in that time period, my anecdotal observation was that the students who used LaTeX generally took longer to finish. How much of that is down to the choice of tool, and how much is down to people choosing LaTeX being more likely to be more exacting about their work overall? I think it's difficult to a say. (FWIW, I started my thesis in LaTeX, then gave up and used Word because it was faster - but only because I didn't know LaTeX prior)
- analog31 7y ago
  I'm sure it was the latter, like you say. For one thing, the computer technology you used depended on your specialty, but there were also different "cultures" within each specialty regarding the thesis. The high-energy physics students had access to Unix workstations and used LaTeX. Most of the other students had whatever old MS-DOS boxes they could afford, commercial quality typesetting was impossible, so nobody demanded it. My advisor didn't even send typeset copy to journals, because he figured they would just retype it anyway. Acceptance of manuscripts in computer readable format was just on the horizon. There was a strong tendency to get emotionally attached to the physical document -- it was the pinnacle of your career after all -- and to get wrapped up in the aesthetics. I avoided that, partially because the clock was ticking. My boss had accepted a job at another university, and I had to clear out by a certain date. Nothing sharpens your mind like a semi truck coming to haul your experiment away.