It’s the tool that she’s learned to get the job done, the virtue of the tool does not matter to a master craftsmanperson, only their proficiency.
Comment on Thoughts??
Gustephan@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Old people and technology man. My advisor during my masters was an absolutely brilliant woman; she’s one of the people who has been basically defining the field of data science since the early 90s. The first time I ever published with her, I sent my first draft and her response was “can you convert this to docx? I don’t know how to work with tex.” I still think she’s one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known but damn did it hurt to work on Microsoft word documents with her
icelimit@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Gustephan@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That might be the stupidest thought terminating cliché ive ever heard. The virtue of the tool absolutely does matter. I’m not out here trying to metaphorically mine iron with a pickaxe when we have metaphorical excavators available, and no amount of expertise will allow somebody to be more efficient with the pickaxe than any random novice with an excavator.
icelimit@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Absolutely true - and that’s when ‘masters’ become obsolete.
Taalnazi@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Have you got recommendations for learning how to use tex, R, or Python for those that haven’t learnt how to programme?
davidagain@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think there are free editors for LaTeX that show you the code and the end result next to each other, and let you edit either.
You need to learn the ability to resist the urge to tweak layout. You’re using a professional document preparation tool that well make your document look professional. Playing with trendy fonts and margins and placement is how regular people make documents in word that look less professional than LaTeX.
LaTeX gives you the respectability of the corporate style of the professional science researcher, but if you want free-form do-it-how-you-like, you really really really don’t want LaTeX.
Taalnazi@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Ah, I use OpenOffice for writing.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Start out with Python. It’s easy to learn and there are tons of courses and tutorials out there. Unless you want to be a professional programmer, it’s all you’ll ever need. Learning tex in this day and age is a waste of time, if you ask me.
sunstoned@lemmus.org 2 days ago
Use markdown instead ;)
zeca@lemmy.eco.br 2 days ago
For tex, i would suggest taking a basic template, and writing what you need, looking up how to do things as you need them. Theres a bunch of documentation on sites like overleaf, and you can learn a lot by looking at stackexchange threads.
Gustephan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
YouTube. Straight up. When I learned to code my yt search history was a million different versions of “how to <do thing> in python” for months. I also really liked the “Computational methods for physics” textbook (you can find the pdf for free on cambridge website), but that book is written for an audience that knows near graduate math but starts praying if their advisor asks them to write a program