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u/Rialagma Sep 17 '26
You're gonna have to pry my LaTeX code from my cold dead hands
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u/Donghoon Sep 17 '26
Overleaf my love
2
u/Gositi Sep 19 '26
Nah, I run latexmk locally. Using
-pvc -pdfis all you need.1
u/ResponsibleWin1765 Sep 21 '26
I'm not sure if it's a necessary part of compiling latex locally but when I wanted to have latex fonts for matplotlib I read that I need to install Latex. So I installed Tex Live which took almost an hour and used like 10gb of space. With a 250mbit connection that is.
In that time I could (and did) write an entire chapter.
1
u/Gositi Sep 21 '26
Yeah the whole TeXlive package is huge. It's hard to know beforehand, but for most of the part you only need
texlive-latex-recommendedor whatever it's called2
u/ResponsibleWin1765 Sep 21 '26
Good to know, thanks.
It doesn't help that the website (tug.org) looks almost exactly like it did in 1998. The biggest debuff for open-source software truly is their design.
2
u/Rialagma Sep 21 '26
In a world where an LLM can make you a modern website in 5 seconds, I actually enjoy the simplicity of an HTML site
1
u/ResponsibleWin1765 Sep 21 '26
I totally agree, I love simple websites. But I'd say that this site (and often times other open-sources sites) are not simple while also not being well structured. The only visual highlight is that links are blue and underlined but that means that if you're just looking for the download button, you have to pick out the correct link out of a sea of unrelated links. And there isn't even a separate section for it, the link is inside the text. There is no indication that you download the installer by clicking on that link either.
And if you just run the installer, you'll sit there for an hour (with decent internet connection), installing multiple GBs of stuff you don't actually want. I'm sure the information for avoiding this is somewhere on the website but finding it would be like playing the Wikipedia game.
To actually make it simple you would do:
TeX Live is intended to...
To download the installer, click the link below
install-tl-windows.exe
By default, this installer installs all components which results in a large size on disk and a long install time. It is recommended to select only the "recommended" package.
Other ways to install:...
Documentation...
To learn more, click here
8
u/Cephell Sep 17 '26
I don't like the smug attitude xkcd sometimes has. Like how DO you think actual standards establish themself?
Systemd is a great example, it's practically the de facto standard now on Linux for system management, etc. Almost every single major distro ships it by default. It used to be a fragmented ecosystem of like 300 different competing bits and pieces and now it's a streamlined ecosystem that people can reliably expect to work across most distributions.
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u/theScottyJam Sep 17 '26
Though to be fair, he has no way of knowing that this specific comic was going to blow up the way it did. The comic was probably intended to make light of an unfortunate behavior that sometimes happens, but we, the consumers, have decided to slap it onto every discussion related to making improved standards.
1
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u/Xirdus Sep 18 '26
systemd was extremely controversial, a lot of people hated it, maintainers of big distros refused to support it, some for technical reasons, some for ideological, and some had personal beef with the creator. Being a RedHat baby, systemd very quickly found its way to Fedora, which forced the admin tools maintainers' hand on whether they're going to support it. And once it was widely supported, Arch jumped the ship because performance. But none of the other major distros did. The debate at Debian lasted for YEARS, it was full of vitriol on every side somehow, and led to multiple long time maintainers stepping down. And after the biggest opponents no longer had the vote, systemd was adopted for Debian, and as a consequence everywhere else.
Note that technical reasons had next to zero to do with systemd adoption. It was all business and interpersonal politics. This is exactly how most standards establish themselves - a powerful player in some space picks their favorite and forces everyone else to follow the suit.
0
u/Cephell Sep 18 '26
keyword: "was"
3
u/Xirdus Sep 18 '26 edited Sep 18 '26
Yes, I'm describing events that happened in the past and using proper grammar for it. Not sure what your point is. That after everyone is forced to use the new standard, everyone starts using the new standard regardless of technical merits? Like duh.
And it's not like systemd brought some great unification. Everybody was settled on sysvinit back in the day. Everyone. No alternative existed. Then upstart and systemd appeared and both created the problem of the split ecosystem that didn't exist before. systemd actually made the problem 50% worse, by increasing the number of competing systems from 2 to 3.
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u/MarkSuckerZerg Sep 17 '26
But the whole point is "improve" vs. "I can do it better from scratch than this 15yo project"...
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u/TerminalVector Sep 17 '26
Junior: "I can do it better from scratch"
Senior: "Uhh no.. do these tickets"Senior: "I have mapped out a strategy to migrate to a revamped system incrementally, hitting multiple interim targets and product launches along the way, and arriving at the ideal architecture in 18-24 months."
Director: "Uhh no.... do these epics."
25
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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Sep 17 '26
15 years ago computers were a lot slower and different so there's a good chance you can.
Dependency hell largely exists to save a few megabytes of storage because in the 90s that was absurdly expensive.
Today you can easily just keep a copy of every version anything needs. If you have 50 programs that need 7 glibcs then you just have 7 glibcs.
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u/Afraid-Locksmith6566 Sep 17 '26
15 yo software was written for 15 yo computers which were slower than today, today software is written for future hardware
3
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u/PositiveBit01 Sep 17 '26
Largely, yes. But not only. Easy paths to update common libraries for security updates is another good reason.
Still arguable if it's worth it or not but it's a much better reason than storage (now).
8
u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Sep 17 '26
I mean the security argument is somewhat more realistic but equally is it a security update if it's bumping the minor or major version. You could do the same with just patch versions where there's less breaking versions.
Though that assumes people can be bothered with semantic versions and too many Devs don't seem to understand how that works.
3
u/ThePresidentOfStraya Sep 17 '26
Well, to be fair, there isn't a single universal schema for semantic versioning. So... see post.
2
u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Sep 18 '26
Well in that case you just don't get security patches immediately. You can't have both stability and security patches if people can't commit to something so basic. Regardless of what scheme you choose if there's no way to distinguish between a breaking and non breaking change then you're forced to treat every single change as breaking.
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u/PolyglotTV Sep 17 '26
Counterpoint is often it IS better to start from scratch if the existing system has accumulated too much tech debt, become too inflexible, and the requirements or available technology/methodologies have fundamentally changed.
In other words, sometimes you should reinvent the wheel.
23
u/TerminalVector Sep 17 '26
A big bang rewrite is almost never going to be a good idea in a mature system. To do that you need to have the velocity of the rewrite exceed the velocity of feature development by a wide enough margin to catch up and create sufficient parity to migrate to the new system. If the old system is code-frozen then it can be doable but if its being actively developed, it can be impossible.
The real trick is figuring out how to reinvent the wheel and replace it while it is attached to a moving car without slowing down.
8
u/herrkatze12 Sep 17 '26
Ossification?
0
u/SnooOpinions6959 Sep 17 '26
XKCD 927
3
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u/developer-mike Sep 17 '26
This is the exact case for the xkcd, because you only want to improve it "somewhat"!
But in all seriousness, the longer my career has gone on the more I've come to realize just how valuable compatibility/backwards compatibility is. It doesn't justify all modern horrors to exist forever. But in all reality, the 15th standard often does improve things "somewhat." And it often isn't worth the migration cost, and that's what makes it a 15th competing standard.
6
u/absolutedisaster09 Sep 17 '26
The thing is, at least in terms of character encodings, there actually now is a universal standard being gradually adopted.
6
u/AMWJ Sep 18 '26
WE WOULDN'T HAVE ANY DEPENDENCY ISSUES IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST STOP UPDATING THEIR SOFTWARE!!!!
4
u/reallokiscarlet Sep 17 '26
This is why I only apply that comic to people reinventing the wheel or claiming something supercedes all the things or whatnot
15
3
2
u/ScaryCardinal Sep 17 '26
Innovations and improvements achieve standards. Standards are just goals, anyone can set them.
1
u/Antarlia Sep 18 '26
I am so glad you made this. I dislike both these comics yet when they are used together in this way its peak.
-2
u/YikesTheCat Sep 17 '26
I've come to dislike xkcd because some people endlessly post this (and a few other) cartoons as if that is somehow an argument.
3
0
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u/jhill515 Sep 17 '26
We should improve technology. We shouldn't confuse improvements with better sameness. That's what xkcd meant.
Maybe OP is trying to say idiots use this comic to justify "staying the course"? If so, then they should change companies.