I agree that LaTeX has not the best syntax, but that is a better alternative? I mostly write in Word and I can tell you that it is not that much better than La

I agree that LaTeX has not the best syntax, but that is a better alternative? I mostly write in Word and I can tell you that it is not that much better than LaTeX. Sure, the editor is WYSIWYG so you can see right away the title, abstract, text, etc. The problems I have with Word are mostly solved in LaTeX. For example, references are automatically managed in LaTeX. In Word, that's mostly a manual process (I know there are integrations with Zotero/Mendeley/whatever, but those are a little wonky on a long paper---I have never used the built-in citation manager). I sometimes feel bad for the editors that have to check all my reference lists. They usually find 1-2 papers that are either missing or included and no longer cited. Tables are also a problem in Word, especially if your collaborators use an older version that breaks the formatting (Moving between Google Docs -> Word -> Google Docs also breaks a lot of things). I can't tell you how many times I had to reformat tables that a collaborator broke. Making complex tables is also wack sometimes, like adding a simple sub-rule between cells requires some column hacks in Word. Table/figure numbering is also another thing that I loathe in Word. Manually renumbering is a pain and the automatic numbering always breaks for me in a way or another (maybe still thanks to my collaborators). All those things work pretty well in LaTeX with some backslash commands. What Word really shines is track changes and commenting. I don't know if there is a LaTeX editor where you can track changes and comments like in Word (I know that Overleaf has something that kind of works). Powerpoint vs. Beamer is a whole different ball of wax. Both have pros and cons. But with presentations with a lot of equations, beamer is definitely better but, as you point out, it doesn't play well when you want to put an equation in a specific spot in the slide. In powerpoint, you can just click and drag and you are done.