LPT Do it.

Counterpoint: advisor said no.

"Just use Word, everyone else does. I have never heard of this latex thing, so must be just some trendy useless overengineered software that does Word's job but worse. Word can track changes just fine, and you can leave comments." proceeds to strikethrough, highlight, and inline comment everything instead of using either of those features "I want to read what you wrote, not fight technology" proceeds to email you three separate times after forgetting to attach v28 about how a graphic looks wrong because Word ate it

The weird part is that most modern office software has version control built right in.

And I still do this with all my files anyway.

git tag "FINAL FINAL FINAL DRAFT - v20"

I should write my resume in LaTeX.

Git is like shit for Word documents

I learned LaTeX just so I could effectively use git in it.

Had to write a paper in college with 100 citations.

We used zotero for citation management, and it would dump a bibtex file on demand.

The paper was written in markdown, stored in git, and rendered through pandoc. We would cite a paper with parentheses and something resembling an id, like (lewis).

We gave pandoc a “citation style definition”, and it took care of everything. Every citation was perfectly formatted. The bibliography was perfectly formatted. Inline references were perfect. Numbering was perfect. All the metadata was ripped from pdfs automatically. It was downright magical.

I also added a Makefile for mine (LaTeX), and it would add the commit hash to the front page (with an asterisk if the repository had uncommitted changes).

So, if I gave a draft to someone and got feedback, I'd know exactly which revision it was.

docx files are actually zip archives with xml in them

What's a good way to learn about Latex and Git. I've tried learning on my own but it's very overwhelming.

I wrote about half of my thesis in R Markdown using Git to backup my work. It's fantastic because you can have your plots and statistics integrated directly into your paper and formatting in Markdown is much easier than straight up latex.

I recently read a tutorial titled: "how to annoy your collaborators: a git CI pipeline for LaTeX" ;)

I encountered an engineering firm that did this. I wanted to do it too.

The company I worked for at the time (said engineering firm was doing subcontracting for us) was full of older business people who could never in a million years have wrapped their heads around the idea.

git checkout -b final_version_revised2_REALLYFINALTHISTIME

git commit -am “holy fuck I hope this really is the last edit” 

git push

"Delete this repository" ate my homework.

Okay, I have a question. I would love to write my papers in latex, but none of my colleges use it. Is there a way to reasonably collaborate with coauthors who only use Word and for whom Latex would be confusing and difficult?

I'm dumb, can someone explain this joke to me? Wtf is a git repo?

I wrote my thesis in Google Docs on my university account.

Don't put binary files in git

Don't you automatically put everything relevant you create in a version control system? And if not, why?

There's no thinking involved on it. Create repo; run editor. The sequence is automatic.

Between zfs and git, all my important data is versioned.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/41b89c77-3168-4af8-bdb5-e59596b30c6d.jpeg

Don't forget to push.

Several times I've lost large chunks of work because I usually copy files from the main folder to backup folders, but occasionally I copy files from a folder that was an old backup, reverting all files everywhere by mistake.

Unzip the docx with a pre-commit hook

Fourth panel from Mark Pilgrim:

• Writing a programming book that typesets your sample code into the book and also runs it to update the sample output shown in the book.

Don't write it in docx though. Markdown or Latex or similar.