> My biggest gripe with latex is the tooling. During my last paper, I ended up using a makefile which would usually work. When it didn’t work, running it twice would fix the issue. In the rarest cases, I had to run `git clean -xdf` and the next run would work.
I always feel like I’m doing something wrong when I have to deal with LaTeX and lose hours to fighting with the tooling. Even with a clean install on a new machine it feels like something fails to work.
The last time I had to change a document I had to go through what felt like 100 different search results of people with the same issue before I found one where there was a resolution and it was completely obscure. I tried to help out by reposting the answer to a couple other locations, but I was so exhausted that I swore off LaTeX for any future work unless absolutely unavoidable.
I still dislike the idea that my document formatting and layout system really needs a build environment. Because let's be real, almost nobody actually needs it for genuine typesetting. I think the problem with LaTeX is that it's too flexible.
It reminds me a little bit of the problem of Linux distributions. Linux is supposed to be a system with the bazaar model instead of the cathedral model. Except what you actually end up with is that each distribution becomes it's own cathedral, because building a whole system now requires major decisions to be made. LaTeX class files feel like the same thing.
Many people use LaTeX via Overleaf (a Website, cf. https://overleaf.com ) rather than installing it locally.
That also solves the problem of having to install locally vairous extension packages or fonts - all is already there, and after writing a paper you may submit it directly to some conferences or journals from that Web GUI instead of having to email it or upload to a third site.