Post by @slava@mathstodon.xyz

2026-10-28 12:21 UTC

If you’re a corporate programmer, TeX is worth studying closely because it is like something from another dimension: - you can take a math paper written in the 80s, typeset it today, and get identical output. Try that with a random C or C++ program and Clang - the TeXbook is one of the best manuals for any piece of software ever. Compare that to your README.md - a second book “TeX: the program” lays out the entire source code side by side with detailed explanations and cross references. Note that all of the code *fits* in a single book. Compare that to your million-line codebase with no comments that nobody understands

Replies (6)

@fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net 2026-10-28 20:42

@slava@mathstodon.xyz small? Not any more: ``` zanzibar ~/build/spool>ls -lh texlive-20260301-* -rw-r--r-- 1 majid majid 2.0M Mar 6 2026 texlive-20260301-extra.tar.xz -rw-r--r-- 1 majid majid 95M Mar 6 2026 texlive-20260301-source.tar.xz -rw-r--r-- 1 majid majid 4.7G Mar 6 2026 texlive-20260301-texmf.tar.xz ```

Open ##5315319
@zenfin@mementomori.social 2026-10-28 12:24

@slava@mathstodon.xyz (La)TeX is perfect for creating mathematical papers in English, meant to be printed out on PostScript printers. If that’s not exactly what you want, it may be a good solution or not. I guess nowadays there is OKish support for Unicode and proper PDFs with proper fonts, but it gets more and more hackish the more modern features you add, doesn’t it? And if you want dynamic layout not tied to a specific paper size, TeX really wasn’t designed for that.

Open ##5463795
@nucholab@genomic.social 2026-10-28 18:20

@slava@mathstodon.xyz PREACH

Open ##5463798
@lindsey@recurse.social 2026-10-28 18:48

@slava@mathstodon.xyz Once I asked Pat Hanrahan what the most beautiful code he had ever seen was, and he said it was the TeX source code.

Open ##5463800
@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz 2026-10-28 19:07

@slava@mathstodon.xyz I appreciate that you distinguish TeX from LaTeX. Re: replacing TeX, that would be great, but i feel a true replacement would share some engineering principles with TeX: no dependencies, no bugs, and code that you can compile for as long as computers will exist. Although there are some interesting projects these days, it seems like they go in the opposite direction.

Open ##5463801
@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz 2026-10-28 19:56

@slava@mathstodon.xyz TeX and LaTeX need to be sharply distinguished. TeX isn't perfect, but it is close to perfect compared with LaTeX. There seems to be a good argument for replacing LaTeX, in other words, which should be independent of conclusions about TeX.

Open ##5463807