Will I convert someone to LaTeX by EOY 2024 ?
8
56
240
2025
41%
chance

This market resolves YES if and only if by EOY 2024 someone I know about starts using LaTeX and that’s at least partly due to me - for example but not limited to that case : if someone at my current firm decides to start using it after I successfully hand in a report edited in LaTeX (see embed).

Please do note that you may have to trust me with the resolution.

Feel free to ask questions, I’ll answer them and provide regular updates if asked.

Inspired by @KongoLandwalker somehow saying that it nce you enter the LaTeX realm there is no way back (okay not exactly that)

Get Ṁ200 play money
Sort by:

If I intended to start learning it in the next few weeks and this question made me start earlier, does that count?

To be clear, seeing this poll didn't make me think learning it would be much more valuable than I already thought. I had already formed the intention to learn it at some point, and have sent friends messages probing if they have any experience with it.

But, this question did make me think about it more actively, and this whole meta line of reasoning about motivations is probably contributing to shorten the timeline between now and when I actually pull up a YouTube playlist with a bunch of tutorials... Maybe shorten it to the next hour, even.

@NevinWetherill Holy cow I didn’t think about this.

Description says « someone I know » so I’d say no in your case. It has to be someone I’ve interacted with previously, irl or maybe online could qualify in some cases.

Things may get a little subjective here so I may want to avoid betting.

@Mich I'll avoid introducing myself to not make things too complicated 🙃

😂

bought Ṁ10 NO

Why would you convert someone to LaTeX when Typst exists? I used LaTeX for years and switching to Typst improved my productivity at least twofold.

@LernenmitLeo interesting question. Well I didn’t know about typst before reading your comment. I’m just on the basics with LaTeX and will likely continue with it anyway for my internship report. Maybe when I’m fluent with LaTeX, « taking a look at typst and see what’s up with it » may be added in my « do when you have free time » list

@LernenmitLeo I hadn't heard of Typst either, so I took a quick look. Is it accurate to say that Typst is just LaTeX with more user-friendly syntax?

@TimothyJohnson5c16 No, that is not accurate. Typst has been rewritten from scratch in Rust, so it uses an entirely different layout engine and compiles much faster. In addition, and this is the most important part for me, Typst values composition, which means that any two packages you choose will very likely work together. Error messages are better, you can instruct the compiler to automatically recompile the document on every save (also no convergence issues), and since Typst is also a fully-featured programming language, you can just do your data analysis in Typst. Comparing it to LaTeX, it still feels like magic just being able to drop a new .json file in your folder and then watching the document update everything based on functions of this input, in seconds.