SuperMiguel said:
Im an Electric Engineer student, should i start learning latex??
It depends on a few things. Though, when I started working with non-physics departments, it really surprised me to discover that hardly anyone outside of the physical sciences/mathematics actually uses latex - so it is by no means necessary.
That said, I love latex (
). It is a fantastic tool, and is exceptional if you're writing a particularly large document or something that is likely to need heavy editing.
Advantages:
1. References are phenomenal. They auto-update, and bibtex saves typing all of the details of a paper you've read in.
2. It looks great.
3. It becomes extremely easy to organise large documents. Once you've finished with a section, you can simply comment it out of the compilation process and ignore it until you're finished the whole thing. You can split sections (or whatever denomination you chose) into different files. Then, if you decide sections need switching -you just change the order the files are used. No messy copy/pasting.
Disadvantages:
1. References are now acceptably good in Microsoft Word, or with EndNote. (This isn't really the disadvantage, the disadvantage is that latex is far more complicated - and you can get the same result easily with a WSYWIG.)
2. There will be many moments that will cause you to lose hair. Things like adding in pictures is no longer simple (I'm sure there will be arguments here.. but for someone starting out, it can be infuriating). Tables are not particularly easy to make, though there are macros that will convert an excel table, for instance.
3. It takes a long time to become familiar with. I've been using latex to write papers for years, back since my undergraduate and I still regularly find things I don't know how to do.
4. Finding the answer is rarely easy. For basic questions, there are hundreds of resources out there - wikibooks is an amazing source of information to start with. But, when you want to start messing with custom formatting, it can quickly become a nightmare. So, it depends how much value you assign to each of the advantages and disadvantages. There are of course more, but I'm tired and have just finished writing a paper in latex so I'm trying to avoid thinking about it too much.
To answer your question more directly: don't learn latex simply because you're an EE student. It isn't necessary and it won't cause you any problems if you don't. If you're interested in making things look a little (lot?) nicer and don't find learning a new language/debugging too upsetting, then go for it.
