I've been thrilled with TeX from my first usage to the present. Of course, when I want to write some math, I use TeX. I also have a collection of TeX macros I wrote for verbatim, cross-references, annotation of figures, foils, ordered lists, simple lists, etc. TeX is my standard for any good or better quality writing, e.g., serious letters. For my last published paper in applied math, right, I did that in TeX (I don't like to publish -- seems financially irresponsible). The journal was very happy to get my TeX source. I also included the source of the few macros of mine that I used in the paper, and the journal was also happy to receive those. For the core, original applied math for my startup, I wrote that in TeX.
Net, I really like TeX.
For "parsing" TeX as in this Hacker News thread, I have no idea what that might mean or why I would want to do that. TeX, just the way Knuth designed and documented it are just fine with me. For me, TeX solves a big problem; I'm just thrilled to have that problem SOLVED; and I have no desire to invest time or energy in another solution to the problem.
Also relevant, in praise of simple text:
Uh, my most heavily used program is my favorite text editor, Kedit. To me, the most important view, at the most important level, computing and/or computer usage is just simple text, i.e., is still like old fashioned typing. So, I have 100+ macros I wrote for Kedit, and some of those help with typing TeX.
"Simple text" for computing? Yup. Early in my startup, I decided to go with Microsoft and Windows instead of Linux or other versions of Unix.
For the 100,000 lines of code (~24,000 programming language statements and the rest comments or blank lines) for my startup (a Web site), I wrote that with just Kedit. Once I tried to use Microsoft's Visual Studio, and for just the start on just a first program in Visual Basic .NET, I got a big directory of a lot of files I didn't understand. I could see I would need to invest a lot of time and energy into getting the software for my startup to run via Visual Studio and could see no important reason why I should make that investment. I've been happy with that decision: For Visual Basic .NET, I type that in via Kedit.
In praise of Visual Basic .NET:
I know; I know; according to a lot of people and industry norms, I'm supposed to use C, C++, C#, or other programming languages in the family of C and certainly nothing called basic. Well, as I recall, the original C documentation admitted that the syntax of C was "idiosyncratic". E.g., it appeared that
i = ++j+++++k++
was legal -- increase each of j and k by 1; add them; assign the result to i; then again increase each of them by 1. Once I tried this statement on two C compilers, and they didn't agree on the results! So, it seemed that the syntax was too "idiosyncratic" even for the compiler writers! That was enough to warn me to stay away from C, and mostly I've been successful at that!
Then much of what I like and want from Microsoft is their .NET software and especially their documentation. As far as I can tell Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is a perfectly good way to make full or nearly so use of .NET and the CLR (common language runtime or some such), exploit their documentation, etc. And with basic I get traditional programming language syntax. To me, that was enough evidence -- decision made. Problem solved. TODO list item checked off.
Yup, at one point my VB.NET calls some C code, right, LINPACK -- apparently the way to do that is to use "platform invoke", and I did and it works fine. I'm still happy as a clam. So, right, I type in my VB.NET code with just Kedit -- been thrilled! VB.NET and Kedit -- happy as a clam!
For TeX, I type that in via Kedit. For email, Kedit. For forum posts, usually Kedit. For working with collections of files in the Windows file system NTFS (abbreviates maybe New Technology File System), Kedit. For my log of food, exercise, sleep, ..., Kedit. Recipes, sure, Kedit. Shopping lists, Kedit. A very important file, my most important, of various facts, short notes, references, and links, right, Kedit. Generally I like to use just simple text, and, thus, Kedit for as much as possible.
For this thread and its
"Sile: A Modern Rewrite of TeX"
I looked at it and could make no sense out of what it was or what it was for. There was something about hyphenation in Turkish! Looks like I should stay with TeX!