>I'm by no means a LaTex expert. I've written a few papers and a bunch of reports, nothing published, just undergraduate stuff
I had a long talk about something like this with a close friend last night. He has a favorite technology stack that is regularly trash talked on sites like this. From what he's seen its usually from people who have only a passing knowledge of it. Either they worked a job and only had to mess with it for a few months or they worked with it for a long time but never went past just the surface. Almost all the complaints he's seen about it are either extremely outdated, fixable with a little custom code or configuration changes. I think you should spend a little more time with it before you say that developers should feel "ashamed" for using it. Your post falls squarely into the category he was talking about.
I wouldn't trash talk this if it was simply an unpopular way of working. I'm trash talking it because it's the most popular way of working. I don't know anyone that does not write his/her papers in LaTex.
I have a lot of respect for having your own toolchain that's optimized and comfortable for you.
I am sorry I come across wrong, I am not saying that developers should feel ashamed for using it. I am saying developers should feel ashamed that other people are using it.
I'm not saying using LaTex is dumb, I've stated multiple times in this thread that I use it myself. I'm just saying we could do better.
I disagree that it's the most popular way of working. Perhaps that is true just in mathematics, physics, and maybe even computer science but unlikely to be true in many other fields. Let's be realistic and realize that the majority of people do not use LaTeX. The ones who do use it, use it because they are putting in a lot of mathematical formulae which are easier to do in LaTeX than Word (although Microsoft is making progress with the equation editor) and the formulae look way nicer in LaTeX. Word renders the formulae into an equation that generally looks bad and scales worse.
The things that I use LaTeX for are usually my own writing that I don't have to collaborate with other people for. If I have to work with other people I use Word. The things that I like about latex are that I can have it automatically generate my figures because I can script it, which I can't do with Word.
I agree that LaTeX can be difficult to write but you have to realize that word has it's shortcomings too (put an image in and send the document to somebody else, chances are the layout will get messed up). Tools like pandoc are trying to alleviate both problems so people can work in whatever environment they prefer, which seems like a good solution to me. I could write part of my document in markdown, convert to LaTeX and write my formulae and then convert to Word so my coworkers can edit it easier.
I have a hard time believing this, to be honest. I know far, far more people who use Microsoft Word, than I do people who use (or even heard of) LaTeX.
It depends on the field. The field I am working in (computational linguistics), virtually everyone uses LaTeX. And with good reason, there are great packages for typesetting stuff that is specific to our field. So, yes, at work I know far more people who use LaTeX than Word.
Agreed. LaTeX is a very field specific tool. I don't know anyone that has ever used it (other than me, and I'm forced to use Word because that's what all my collaborators use).
I had a long talk about something like this with a close friend last night. He has a favorite technology stack that is regularly trash talked on sites like this. From what he's seen its usually from people who have only a passing knowledge of it. Either they worked a job and only had to mess with it for a few months or they worked with it for a long time but never went past just the surface. Almost all the complaints he's seen about it are either extremely outdated, fixable with a little custom code or configuration changes. I think you should spend a little more time with it before you say that developers should feel "ashamed" for using it. Your post falls squarely into the category he was talking about.