• sartalon@futurology.today
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    1 year ago

    I had a professor that made us use LaTex for our lab reports. Kept telling us it is an industry standard. I knew it was bullshit.

    Every time we had a guest speaker come and talk about their work (was in an EE program), I would ask if they used LaTex. ( I was bitter because I felt I was being forced to waste time learning something that I didn’t need to).

    Every single one said no. Some didn’t even know what it was.

    The professor always gave me a dirty look, but he never gave me shit about it, but he also never changed his policy.

    I’ve been working as an EE for 3 years now and I have still never seen LaTex in the wild.

      • duncesplayed@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        It’s the standard for industry research, as well. And for education (e.g., textbooks) and a lot of technical documentation.

        Basically any job where you may have to type math (and make it look okay), (La)TeX will be the standard. Anything other than TeX, LaTeX or Typst for typesetting math would be pure masochism.

        But if your job is to actually do things applied, and your math can be limited to scribbling on a whiteboard or a notebook and never showing anyone other than maybe a coworker or two, you will probably never have a need for LaTeX.