When would one learn Latex, the right way?

Question

How come that some people seem to know about everything about LaTeX? How do they get there?

In my experience, I use LaTeX whenever needed to produce a paper (by now my diploma thesis), but I never get into the depths of all this macro programming works and all this stuff I consider fancy. But I don't get the concepts very much, especially when using TikZ at the moment, I have no idea what is all possible and just use trial and error, copy and paste together some stuff and so on. I am sure many people can relate to that, since LaTeX is always "only a tool". When compared to e.g. C++ one would go into depth naturally, because C++ is not just a tool but the thing itself. I am really sorry, although LaTeX is really the best text formatting program ever, I never seem to find it necessary to dig deeper. By now I have written a few documents in LaTeX, but never got deeper into the fancy stuff. Where are the people that do dig deeper, and what motivates them?

Edit This is not exactly a question that needs an answer, I just want to hear some peoples thoughts on that topic, because this thought has been in my head for a while and in a way I only want to talk about it. I hope this is ok.

Edit. As response to Peter Flynns answer: I hope nobody is actually offended by my provocative statement, that C++ is the "real thing", while TeX is not. I am happy to see someone who is as enthusiastic about Latex as most people I know are about programming languages for example. A comparable thing in Germany is the Deutsche Bahn (public trains) which most people are always dissatisfied with. When you're late and say:"My train was late." You will most likely hear some ranting about how stupid and bad the DB is. If you are late, however, due to a traffic jam, people will not be as hateful about the streets here as they are about the DB. I think Latex is a little like that: If I am having a math problem, I would not blame math, that it's stupid and it's math's fault that I don't get it. When my software does not work as expected, I would rather feel angry on myself than on the language. But when my text-program does not deliver what I want, I tend to blame that stupid Latex. I could as well RTFM, but I have this strange feeling that some things just have to work as I intend, without me giving it the appropriate amount of attention.

The same applies for stealing: I think most people would not dare steal something from a shop, but I don't know anyone who has never dodged the fare (the direct German translation is schwarzfahren - black riding), or watched a movie online they hadn't payed for. Although both are "the real thing" (stealing) only one is considered as such.

I think, I owe Latex an apology for not taking it serious enough...

EDIT Thanks for all the comments. This gives me some insight on how you view this topic, and how you proceed with learning Latex.

My question is more about, what motivates you rather than how you do it. Thanks

Answer 1

There are several things going on here which need separating out.

How do some people seem to know all about LaTeX? As Schweinebacke said, read, read, read. But also do, do, do, for many years. I've been using TeX and then LaTeX for 30 years, and I've written about it and I teach it, but I'm still basically a user, not a computer scientist, and I will never know as much about it as people who have studied CS and know every line of TeX code.

Getting the concepts isn't hard, but it depends on how you learn. The very worst way is "sitting by Nellie" (old industrial slang for learning by sitting beside an older worker and copying everything they do — faults and all). Your colleague in the lab or library is probably the worst person to learn from. Better is a course or class, and even better if you RTFM as well. Learning the concepts makes learning the detail much easier and faster.

I don't get some of the concepts in TikZ either, because I haven't used it enough, and I haven't read enough of the documentation yet, and I don't know of a course or class. The trial-and-error, copy-and-paste approach is not really sustainable, although it's always excusable if you're under pressure to get that thesis submitted by the deadline. But LaTeX should never be "only a tool", though: you wouldn't treat your car or your power screwdriver with that kind of disdain — at least, I hope not — and you shouldn't do so to software either.

The comparison with C++ is entirely bogus. [La]TeX is the "real thing" in its field, just as C++ is in its field. They are languages of comparable complexity, and it's possible to be a novice user and move towards becoming a guru over time in either of them.

What motivates people to dig deeper? I suspect similar chemical drivers to those that motivate people to climb higher or run faster or find out more in any field. In my case, I started typesetting at an early age, and just wanted to master it (still waiting for that to happen).

But some people lack the time, or the inclination, or the level of interest, to learn any more than absolutely necessary on each occasion. They may feel they are winning, but over time they will probably spend more hours being frustrated than they would have spent learning how.

Answer 2

Someone said to me once:

A computer is a machine and it has to work.

In other words, a computer is a tool. So is a hammer. Or a bike. Tools to get something done (get on the internet, write a thesis, get a nail into the wall, riding to the supermarket).

If you are not interested in bikes, you probably still know how to ride a bike and do so on a regular basis. If you are interested in bikes, you know why they work, you know how they work and you probably know how to fix a bike if it is broken. You might even know some cool tricks.

It is the being interested part that makes the difference.
If you are interested to a specific field, you will learn that bits and pieces you find interesting.

Answer 3

I certainly don't know everything about LaTeX, but I do know quite a lot, so hopefully I'm qualified to give my own view on this. I learned LaTeX properly because the time invested in the short term pays itself back hundreds of times over in the long term (at least it does if you write a lot of documents).

The wrong way is to learn a little, then get by with botched solutions, fragments of bad code off random internet sites, bad document templates provided by others (usually with many unnecessary \usepackage commands), etc. Then, when things go wrong, trying to fix them is extremely frustrating. This sort of approach is probably the biggest cause of wasted hours across many branches of computing. An example: I have seen two long documents in which all the equations were aligned using multiple nonbreaking spaces (~). Compare the time needed to do this over and over again with the time needed to read the appropriate sections of the amsmath package manual.

The right way is to read a decent book, then consult package manuals where necessary. If something is really difficult, compose a decent MWE, ask a question on stackexchange, and wait a few minutes for @egreg or @David Carlisle to answer.

Answer 4

Especially highlighting Peter's first and last paragraphs, my own practical expertise came from:

a) Try "it" (like TeX) out and decide that it would be worth learning and to commit time to the task.

b) Study the manuals and examples to figure out how to produce something basic. Focus on one problem at a time.

c) Extend capability over time by making a point to figure out how do (something new/alternative/fancier) instead of just repeating what you know.