> Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting?
Why does anyone care about typesetting? Probably because they spend a lot of time working with text and have therefore developed a level of taste.
Just because the bottom 80% of consumers have zero taste and will accept any slop you give them doesn't mean there isn't value in doing something only appreciated by the top 20%. In any field, not just typesetting. Most people have ~no refined endogenous preferences for food, art, music, etc.
I wonder if any doctoral defense has hinged on how refined the typesetting was. Probably. It’s the sort of ritual humiliation that academia specializes in.
I'm not sure that it is as much about ritual humiliation as much as that, well, you are supposed to be at some sort of summit, so you must have refined your process.
A mountain hiker can wear whatever, but above a certain altitude something must be true of them (fit, trained well, holding various gear, has supplies, or is in a plane/heli and probably even better trained/equipped/fit).
I would hope that typesetting is just a qualia of an ordered mind not a goal of it.
You can choose to feel "humiliated", but the truth should be closer to that you may simply be inadequate in that regard.
I.e. it is not that using LaTeX (or even Typst) makes you a better person, just that certain types of people will tend to use tools, like mountain climbers likely use carabiners.
Poor typesetting is like going to an interview in your underwear. While it may not directly reflect your skill, it says a lot about how much effort you like to put into things.
> I wonder if any doctoral defense has hinged on how refined the typesetting was.
At least 1 [0], but that's obviously a rather special case.
[0] https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb21-4/tb69thanh.pdf