LaTeX

What hackers pick instead

• TypstA modern LaTeX alternative with saner syntax, built-in scripting and fast compilation that makes programmatic PDF generation easy; HTML output is still experimental and the ecosystem is smaller.205recommend
• TeXFree typesetting system praised for unmatched typesetting quality and stability, especially for mathematics; the language is widely criticized as hard to program.27recommend
• QuartoRecommended for turning Markdown and code into documents, websites, slides and books, but critics say it still has rough edges.27recommend
• TeXmacsFree WYSIWYG editor for fast, well-typeset math and structured documents. Critics say it supports only a subset of LaTeX, so LaTeX packages won't work.19recommend
• TeX LiveRecommended as a complete, reliable LaTeX distribution with many manuals and wide platform support. Main caveat: the full install is 6 to 7 GB.10recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 256 comments. Each links to the original.

1. LaTeX is extremely powerful, but also way too complicated for the average non-HN person/person who doesn't live in complicated documents.

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word”

2. For "pure" mathematics or similar topics I think LaTeX (or system that represents a superset of LaTeX) is the only acceptable option.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)”

3. how nice its output is, how respected Knuth is as a computer scientist, and at the same time how totally awful it feels to use it

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust”

4. Anyone under the age of 90 who knows enough math to prove the Riemann Hypothesis will have learned and strongly prefer LaTeX.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “A Spectral-Geometric Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis”

5. Latex is good for equations. And Latex tools produce very nice PDFs, but I wouldn't want to write in Latex generally either.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Prism”

6. LaTeX, vim, sed, awk, the whole Unix toolkit is getting a new lease on life, because their interfaces are text.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “GNU Texmacs”

7. if a paper is not written by Latex, I naturally question the research and learning ability of the authors

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “The Productivity J-Curve [pdf]”

8. They are more stable, I trust they're not going to change out from under me, and it is more transferable.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Tiny Little Office”

9. I reuse my LaTeX code to make volumes of books, and I never touch the code. It's fire and forget for me

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “LaTeX Coffee Stains [pdf]”

10. writing math in latex is very good, and despite how everything else (like tables and figures) is so bad

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust”

11. Knuth spent years building LaTeX so that compsci and math papers could be formatted as beautiful PDFs

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Étienne Ghys: The Shape of Letters: From Leonardo da Vinci to Donald Knuth”

12. the result was far beyond anything I could have realistically produced through Docs anyway

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Figma's MCP Update Reflects a Larger Industry Shift”

13. TeX and LaTeX are ancient and produce better looking results than any book I've ever read

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “I'm never buying another Kindle, and neither should you”

14. you use LaTex or typst with a good template for typesetting your scientific contributions

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “A Collection of Chronic Medical Conditions Common in Autistic and ADHD Adults [pdf]”

15. it was the best way at the time to make a readable research paper that was heavy in math

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “C Isn't a Language”

16. get a much more professional, customisable, git-commitable and transferable presentation

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Tiny Little Office”

17. battle proved TeX with consistent syntax, build for processing text, with great fonts

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Rewriting in Rust”

18. adding one oar will break other oars, sometimes leaving one adrift or run aground

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “The Lingua Franca of LaTeX”

19. The decision to let users redefine %, \ and literally every character seems like a really, really bad idea to me.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine”

20. Using LaTeX is mostly fine, except for the endless compile times, useless error messages, lack of unicode, etc.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine”

21. The fact that there are no namespaces and every package can modify everything makes it a complete nightmare.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “TeX Live 2026 is available for download now”

22. Proper technical authoring systems like Typst, LyX and LaTeX are way too hard for the average person

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word”

23. cryptic error messages, complex pipeline, lack of the proper Unicode symbols support out of the box

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine”

24. just always having broken output as I use more unicode (maths symbols, emojis) in my documents.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine”

25. IMO this rules out (La)TeX entirely: it's just too much work that nobody wants to deal with.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Markdown is holding you back”

26. Due to LaTeX's arcane scripting and the lack of interest people have in learning it beyond

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst”

27. The ability to tell LaTeX to drop a picture around here, to the best of its ability, with the possibility of moving it down a paragraph or two if it doesn't fit is vital for me.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “LaTeX Coffee Stains [pdf]”

28. LaTeX must also be in the game, because we need people who know how to express themselves crafting good quality documents.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “MIT Missing Semester 2026”

29. all the orgs I've seen using LaTeX have been using TeX since the dawn of time and respect the accumulated knowledge

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst”

30. I frequently needed to use raw LaTeX commands, and it was mostly OK but I had a few frustrations with my setup.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “A New Typst Template for Pandoc”

31. LaTeX has two things out of the gate: The technical capability, and a small but arguably rabid user base.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers”

32. Tex is the superior typesetting, and since the advent of LLMs getting things done in Tex became a breeze.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers”

33. As someone who loves LaTeX, I can't imagine ever spending so much time on typography on online forums

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes”

34. A LaTeX or Typst document can contain both the content and formatting together within the same file.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “The immortality of Microsoft Word”

35. I pretty much never write anything in plain .tex files anymore as a result of how convenient this is

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “The Emacsification of Software”

36. I certainly would (and have for all my previous publications) prefer typst or latex over markdown.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst”

37. GPT-5 regularly fails at writing and debugging LaTeX which I'm using for all of the card creation

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)”

38. using LaTeX to generate a PDF and then converting that to an image is probably going to be easier

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust”

39. it helps once you learn to not care about it till the absolute end of working on the content.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS”

40. it is much less awful to use them these days, with a rich selection of rather robust packages

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust”