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What I don’t understand is why Latex so cumbersome, complicated, unintuitive, ugly and slow. Is it simply a technical debt of choices made in time when computer

What I don’t understand is why Latex so cumbersome, complicated, unintuitive, ugly and slow. Is it simply a technical debt of choices made in time when computers were different and when there were different constraints? Is it just a nature of the problem and every tool will feel the same? Is it a result of evolution with a lack of direction? Was literate programming a bad design decision?

xamuel 6y ago
If you're an actual mathematician writing pages and pages of equations, LaTeX is not complicated, unintuitive, ugly, or slow. It's actually extremely well designed for addressing what is a very difficult problem, the problem of translating mathematics into ASCII. For how difficult that problem is, LaTeX is quite genius. I think a lot of the would-be LaTeX-disruptors lack enough experience actually writing mathematics. LaTeX worked because Donald Knuth is both a great programmer AND a good mathematician. When LaTeX gets replaced, it'll need to replaced by a person (or team) with similar cross-disciplinary strengths.
- ketzu 6y ago
  Are you specifically talking about the math syntax within latex, or actual latex commands in general? Because I would disagree on the latter one. (But I'm a computer scientist not a mathematician.) uglyness is porbably hard to discuss as it's just a matter of taste. I personally consider compile times that are measured in seconds for "simple" tasks slow (here's the question of it being an inherent problem of the space).
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    As someone who did both math courses and programming courses, I found LaTeX to be awesome for writing equations. It felt so natural I would more often then not solve equations in LaTeX directly. However when writing stuff for my comp-sci courses, man what a chore. Pseudo-code was a PITA, as was getting decent tables of results where I wanted. So for a lot of those I threw my hands in the air and finished the paper using Word. It might have been me, I try to learn as I went along, but it certainly was not as easy as math.
    - danielscrubs 6y ago
      Markdown (via Pandoc) with the tex_math_dollars extension for math is the bees knees.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    In a rewritten from scratch Latex, I would only make minor changes to the syntax of Latex. I don't think you can have another syntax that is overall better - compromises will be made somewhere or the other. Compile time of course, can be fixed by reimplementing the whole compiler in a modern language.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- im3w1l 6y ago
  For mathematics it is the best tool hands down. For papers without a single equation, I'm not as sure.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  But what if you a computer scientists or an economist that needs to write graphs, charts, tables, code, etc? Last time I tried to strikeout a column it required some weird TikZ shenanigans.
  - xamuel 6y ago
    Agree LaTeX is painful here. For tables and inline code snippets, it is indeed a genuine shortcoming of LaTeX. On the other hand: * For graphs and charts, I'm not sure how it could be done much better in a text-based programming language. * Even for tables you have to have some sympathy because remember, the cells in the table can (and occasionally do) contain very complicated mathematical contents. Tables are hard, as many a frontend dev will assure you.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Do you mean strike out each entry in the column separately? Or a single line that extends from the top left of the column to the bottom right? The first can be done in a straightforward manner. Can Word do the second easier than Latex?

xamuel 6y ago

If you're an actual mathematician writing pages and pages of equations, LaTeX is not complicated, unintuitive, ugly, or slow. It's actually extremely well designed for addressing what is a very difficult problem, the problem of translating mathematics into ASCII. For how difficult that problem is, LaTeX is quite genius. I think a lot of the would-be LaTeX-disruptors lack enough experience actually writing mathematics. LaTeX worked because Donald Knuth is both a great programmer AND a good mathematician. When LaTeX gets replaced, it'll need to replaced by a person (or team) with similar cross-disciplinary strengths.

ketzu 6y ago
Are you specifically talking about the math syntax within latex, or actual latex commands in general? Because I would disagree on the latter one. (But I'm a computer scientist not a mathematician.) uglyness is porbably hard to discuss as it's just a matter of taste. I personally consider compile times that are measured in seconds for "simple" tasks slow (here's the question of it being an inherent problem of the space).
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  As someone who did both math courses and programming courses, I found LaTeX to be awesome for writing equations. It felt so natural I would more often then not solve equations in LaTeX directly. However when writing stuff for my comp-sci courses, man what a chore. Pseudo-code was a PITA, as was getting decent tables of results where I wanted. So for a lot of those I threw my hands in the air and finished the paper using Word. It might have been me, I try to learn as I went along, but it certainly was not as easy as math.
  - danielscrubs 6y ago
    Markdown (via Pandoc) with the tex_math_dollars extension for math is the bees knees.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  In a rewritten from scratch Latex, I would only make minor changes to the syntax of Latex. I don't think you can have another syntax that is overall better - compromises will be made somewhere or the other. Compile time of course, can be fixed by reimplementing the whole compiler in a modern language.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
im3w1l 6y ago
For mathematics it is the best tool hands down. For papers without a single equation, I'm not as sure.
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
But what if you a computer scientists or an economist that needs to write graphs, charts, tables, code, etc? Last time I tried to strikeout a column it required some weird TikZ shenanigans.
- xamuel 6y ago
  Agree LaTeX is painful here. For tables and inline code snippets, it is indeed a genuine shortcoming of LaTeX. On the other hand: * For graphs and charts, I'm not sure how it could be done much better in a text-based programming language. * Even for tables you have to have some sympathy because remember, the cells in the table can (and occasionally do) contain very complicated mathematical contents. Tables are hard, as many a frontend dev will assure you.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Do you mean strike out each entry in the column separately? Or a single line that extends from the top left of the column to the bottom right? The first can be done in a straightforward manner. Can Word do the second easier than Latex?