TeX
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 3 of 12 typesetting systems by recommenders
Free typesetting system praised for unmatched typesetting quality and stability, especially for mathematics; the language is widely criticized as hard to program.
Free typesetting system praised for unmatched typesetting quality and stability, especially for mathematics; the language is widely criticized as hard to program.
39 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 69%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Typesetting quality still unbeaten
“It's typesetting quality is still unbeaten by any of its competitors though, even 50 years after its first release.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts” “TeX and LaTeX are ancient and produce better looking results than any book I've ever read”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “I'm never buying another Kindle, and neither should you” “its real value was in the quality of its typesetting”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust” Stable and maintained for decades
“The LaTeX kernel and the TeX engines are more stable than nearly all other software”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine” “TeX's 50-year history of volunteer maintainership”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine” “if you are looking for stability, look no further”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “Markdown is holding you back” Strong for maths and aligned tables
“I still find it easier to align tables with numbers in TeX on the decimal point than in anything else.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust” “TeX still dominates mathematical typesetting AFAIK”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Blender 5.0” De facto standard for technical writing
“I'd always recommend and use a TeX-based document layout system”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Calibri Wasn't Fit for the State Department; Neither Is Times New Roman” “LaTeX and TeX are the de facto standard for this context”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Messy macros that fail badly
“TeX macros and C #defines especially when nested and/or not properly bracketed to allow nesting are a mess when things go wrong.”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst” “TeX's macro-centric hell pounded into passable utility”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust” “had to lose sanity for it to even work semi well”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “TeX Live 2026 is available for download now” Poor language, cursed to program
“It's not a very good programming language, but people have implemented floating-point math”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “"Why not just use Lean?"” “it’s a cursed way to do programming and has no parallel in any other programming paradigm”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine” “Hard agree about TeX the language and tooling.”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Slug Text Rendering Algorithm Dedicated to Public Domain” - Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “The Lingua Franca of LaTeX”
Other typesetting systems people recommend
The four most recommended other typesetting systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 typesetting systems, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 47 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“This is what Knuth made TeX for! art!”
“a lot of us use plain text editors together with systems like markdown or restructured text or TeX”
“it would've been okay if they'd allowed it to run on the server as each order came in”
“how powerful can be TeX and fear this path, because it takes a long training”
“I felt the pain of TeX so much”
“I hope tex gets replaced by typst.”
“the fact that in TeX you can change the meaning of the escape symbol or the comment symbol is pure insanity IMHO”
“it is widely considered that TeX was worth the delay”
“This is why Don and his TeX is the legend”
“the TeX justification algorithm is quadratic-time”
“TeX macros and C #defines especially when nested and/or not properly bracketed to allow nesting are a mess when things go wrong.”
“does not hold all its state in global variables and has a sensible scripting language”
“TeX's 50-year history of volunteer maintainership”
“The LaTeX kernel and the TeX engines are more stable than nearly all other software”
“it’s a cursed way to do programming and has no parallel in any other programming paradigm”
“you generally only need to modify a single variable to change the page size”
“It's typesetting quality is still unbeaten by any of its competitors though, even 50 years after its first release.”
“other better tools like TeX instead of a WYSIWYG editor”
“I'm fascinated with TeX (and have spent a lot of my life rewriting it”
“I still find it easier to align tables with numbers in TeX on the decimal point than in anything else.”
“its real value was in the quality of its typesetting”
“While TeX and LaTeX have fundamental design flaws”
“TeX did one thing well for an era”
“the only thing that truly understands TeX, is, and will forever be, TeX”
“It's not that TeX is an ad hoc system; it's more the case that people didn't actually know how to implement a better system at the time.”
“TeX's macro-centric hell pounded into passable utility”
“TeX is sustainable and it's approaching a limit function”
“Programming the TeX engine is a mess.”
“It's not a very good programming language, but people have implemented floating-point math”
“TeX and LaTeX are ancient and produce better looking results than any book I've ever read”
“Hard agree about TeX the language and tooling.”
“I had to rename all the Java source files to abide by the NTSPL license terms”
“had to lose sanity for it to even work semi well”
“TeX is truly free from capital, and that should mean far more than the aesthetics of a nicer interface.”
“I'd always recommend and use a TeX-based document layout system”
“allows for you to "render" the program as a typographed work explaining how TeX is made”
“LaTeX and TeX are the de facto standard for this context”
“Unlike many I was never really unhappy with TeX, I still think it is amazing.”
“if you are looking for stability, look no further”
“TeX still dominates mathematical typesetting AFAIK”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.