Storing text in binary formats like word docs instead of plain text like latex makes git version control unusable.

/begin{outrage}

How dare they!?

/end{outrage}

latex exists to make your text look more professional, not to make you more productive, duh.

pig lipstick

I've wasted hours of my life, trying to insert an image in a word document without word compressing it, making it illegible, only to find out that it's impossible. I can't even imagine anything being worse at this point

Just write everything in markdown and use pandoc to type set.

Word definitely has its niche.

However, I find for many of my tasks, LaTeX or Typst just make sense. I don’t need to worry about out of date figures. I can customize styling instantly. I can track my changes with Git. Grammar checking is rough tho. lsp-like grammar checking would revolutionize my world lol.

I can personally attest that I transitioned to LaTeX from Word, when Word wouldn’t handle equations correctly, or would crash when I had too many. It doesn’t matter if I can put out 50 word equations faster than LaTeX if I’m breaking my flow state to restart my editor.

They overlap in their ecosystem niches but in no way is one a complete replacement for the other. LaTeX has a larger niche than Word which makes it a really safe default.

“Nobody ever got fired for choosing React”

Maybe it takes more time because it allows more editing control over the finished product. The report of an enjoyable user experience for latex would back this up since users were able to produce what they wanted instead of being limited to using words jank as editing and just giving up or using a shitty template. Test against plain text entry I bet there is a positive correlation between limited features and total word count

needs more jpeg.

but on a serious note, how do you version control an msoffice/libreoffice document? you can't just put it in git, the repo will get huge quickly

Now judge it by how good the end result looks

But also.... The fuck?

I've been questioning the benefits every time someone insisted that I should use latex. Now I have scientific evidence that it won't make my life better!

I'm imagining what it would be like to write a page long {align} in word and it's terrifying.

I used it for resumes and assignments in school. Like others said I wasn't trying to save time but to make things look more professional.

Typst >>>>>.

But still, Word sucks ass.

This is an outrage! 🧐

I wonder how typst performs in this regard. That said, does anyone know how to more easily create a diagram?

Well, duh, I obviously learned LaTeX only to be less productive and procrastinate more. And when I was getting somewhere with it, I had to switch to RMarkdown instead to be able to procrastinate even more! Imagine actually having to think about the content of your work, ugh :/

sample size seems small but im no expert