LaTex is for typesetting. I know of nobody who “does the math” in LaTex; they do the math on paper and write it up in LaTex for presentation or publication (or if they need to ask a question on MathOverflow, or something like that).
That said, you should learn LaTex if you ever want to do research in anything mathematical.
I started using LaTeX for my physics homework because I kept making algebraic mistakes (mostly sign errors) when I’d copy expressions between steps. Ended up saving me time on net.
I use vim now (with syntax highlighting plus some useful macros), but I used nano for a few years and it wasn’t too bad either. I compile in the command line and have a pdf open in another window.
I use Kile. Being able to commit, tag and branch in git (heck, just being able to erase a part in the middle and rewrite it without ending up with a chain of arrows across three different pieces of paper) makes things easier to be worth the (slight) writing slowdown, and most of the time I can express myself in latex—after a while it just becomes the language you think in, \int becomes the symbol for integration and so on. Very occasionally I’ll write something I know is incorrect notation but close enough that I’ll know what I meant, and can go back and correct it later.
LaTex is for typesetting. I know of nobody who “does the math” in LaTex; they do the math on paper and write it up in LaTex for presentation or publication (or if they need to ask a question on MathOverflow, or something like that).
That said, you should learn LaTex if you ever want to do research in anything mathematical.
Hello! Nice to meet you!
My questions are how (what editor) and why?
LaTeX seems an awful way to do scratch work, which is most of math.
I started using LaTeX for my physics homework because I kept making algebraic mistakes (mostly sign errors) when I’d copy expressions between steps. Ended up saving me time on net.
I use vim now (with syntax highlighting plus some useful macros), but I used nano for a few years and it wasn’t too bad either. I compile in the command line and have a pdf open in another window.
I use Kile. Being able to commit, tag and branch in git (heck, just being able to erase a part in the middle and rewrite it without ending up with a chain of arrows across three different pieces of paper) makes things easier to be worth the (slight) writing slowdown, and most of the time I can express myself in latex—after a while it just becomes the language you think in, \int becomes the symbol for integration and so on. Very occasionally I’ll write something I know is incorrect notation but close enough that I’ll know what I meant, and can go back and correct it later.
I totally do some math in latex :). It’s just easier to convert mentally sometimes than get paper out.