Yep, I'm a CS researcher in a top-3 department. (Hate to be all credentialist like that, but I'm guessing it does mean something to this audience.)

I think a lot of the reason is that, ok, LaTeX is extremely complicated. We all know this. Its partisans tend to believe that this is because typesetting is a hard problem. Typesetting is a hard problem! We know this, too. But I think that a substantial fraction of the complexity of LaTeX is accidental complexity stemming, ultimately, from the inherently loosey-goosey nature of the system.

See, there is no real abstraction in TeX. There are no real mechanisms for encapsulation/information hiding/whatever. It's all just characters that eat characters and turn into other characters. Anything can do anything. Anything can be anything. As a result, the whole "theory" of what a TeX program "is" (like in the sense that Peter Naur used that word?) is conventional.

This means that even to reuse other people's code, you have to imbibe decades of convention that's maybe semi-documented, maybe folkloric, or maybe perfectly sound but requires you to read a 230-page manual. I can only speak for myself, but for me, it's no way to live.

Now, again, TeX-lovers tend to claim that its high degree of loosey-gooseyness is necessary, that it's what makes TeX "powerful." I don't know, that sounds to me like the same old "you can't handle writing assembly" story. Sure I can. I'd just rather not if I can help it.

Maybe it's the PL person in me.

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Rochus 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or could it be that the fact that LaTeX is a layer on top of TeX is a cause of additional complexity and that you still have to deal with TeX, so the abstraction is neither complete nor opaque? I assume in Typst they don't (yet) have this issue. Another reason could be missing static typing and thus less formal means to find bugs? You "missing abstractions" finding would point to that.

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throwaway_7274 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, absolutely, the sheer number of moving parts is related to this. There's TeX-the-language, there's LaTeX-the-format (a big layer of macros and conventions), the different LaTeX standards (LaTeX2ε, LaTeX3, whatever, I don't know the ins and outs). Then there's the implementation: all the different engines (pdftex, XeTeX, LuaTex), then there are the distributions, then there are build systems and wrapper scripts to handle all the mysterious compilation-cycle incantations that depend on all the other stuff (latexmk, etc.).

All these layers and alternatives have proliferated partly because of age and the necessity of new solutions to new problems. I also think they're partly coping with fundamental limitations, design decisions that seemed like (or very much were!) a good idea in 1978, that sort of thing.

	▲	ok123456 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And the TeX that we know is the "new" TeX, which was created after Knuth completely rewrote the "old" TeX in 1983.

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fredguth 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I totally agree. I have written in LaTeX extensively and Typst is a game changer and a life saver. The community is also a plus. I love it and I will never go back to TeX.

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jfengel 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

TeX had many design goals. "Being a good programming language" was not one of them.

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throwaway_7274 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed! It undeniably succeeded at setting the standard for typesetting quality. Big ups to Don K.

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analog31 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It also brought typesetting to academic research, which means it's doing something that wasn't necessary before it arrived.

I was one of the last holdouts from a bygone era. I finished my dissertation in physics, in 1993. It's neither typeset, nor even in a computer readable form. Some fellow students were already using LaTeX by that point (mostly high energy physics, the slowest to graduate of the physics specialties) but I wasn't going to change my already obsolete tech stack within mere months of finishing.

I also have my parents' chemistry theses. They took handwritten manuscripts to a typist who banged out 4 copies at once using carbon paper. And then they entered their equations and figures by hand. (My thesis is hand corrected too). And their theses were short.

LaTeX did a lot of things for my fellow students, but it didn't make them finish quicker.

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throwaway_7274 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You wrote an analog thesis about 31 years ago, analog31? You've been playing the long game with this account!

Appreciate the story, thanks for sharing. Can I ask what your thesis was on (in whatever way isn't too personally-identifying if that's a concern)?

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analog31 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I anticipated this moment. ;-)

It was at a time of extremely rapid development of laser technology, where you built your own lasers to be at the cutting edge, which meant optics, electronics, and in my case, computer control plus data collection. I developed a method of increasing the signal-to-noise for a class of spectroscopy measurements by a factor of roughly 1000. This opened up a number of possible experiments involving otherwise weak effects.

My experiment produced some token physics results, but the method that I developed was really the point of it. A couple other labs used my setup, substituting more modern lasers as they became available. Meanwhile, I went into industry, and still work on measurement instrumentation today.

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throwaway_7274 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Good stuff, nothing but respect for that kind of work. AMO people are a different breed. Spending all day interpreting power spectral densities and tracking down ground loops takes a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Literally. Last time I used a microwave amplifier I plugged it in with the wrong polarity and blew it up!

	▲	analog31 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It probably required negative power for some unexpected reason. CMOS has spoiled us.

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ashton314 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fellow PL grad student—not a top-3 tho ;)

I’ve looked at Typst and it looks attractive. I’m not quite willing to invest in it until, say, PACMPL lets me use it there. Any idea if that will happen any time soon?

	▲	throwaway_7274 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wouldn't count on it! For me, it's been invaluable for notes and memos (and my thesis). When it comes time to submit a paper, I transcribe everything to LaTeX. It's a pain, but it's a lesser pain than transcribing from handwritten notes scattered across three notebooks and several crumpled-up sheets of printer paper in the bottom of my bag. That's my own peculiarity; YMMV. (Edit: also, ugh, I feel like such a goof for having written that. Thanks for being nice about it.)

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fergie 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> top-3 departement

I’m curious- what does this mean?

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throwaway_7274 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ugh, unfortunately it means "please note that I'm not an unserious person." Very often when you have opinions on software on the internet, trolls will jump out of the hedgerow and shout, "who are you to have an opinion?" And, sadly, that same sort of person will often be mollified somewhat by prestige.

Feels kind of icky to have written that, though, and maybe I regret it slightly.

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ok123456 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It also belies an ignorance that some schools have specializations. Utah wouldn't come to mind as a "top-20" school by the snobs, but they basically created computer graphics.

	▲	2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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analog31 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It narrows things down to about 20 departments. ;-)

	▲	throwaway_7274 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		:)