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Not to doubt your story but being a flight instructor myself, I cannot imagine intentionally turning off power to airplane radios at an airport with a control tower (this is also illegal). As far as the pure mechanics of landing go, one does not need any instruments whatsoever: one can judge the airspeed by the sound and the wing angle. I routinely make my students do this when I teach tailwheel flying.

I respect your stance (although I disagree strongly) but you might consider something other than Sile, as Chapter 6 of Sile's manual is called 'SILE Macros and Commands'. Also from reading about D, his strongest objection to using macros is that they do not respect the scope. This is probably the main source of macros' strength as code generators. Again, I respect your aversion to macros, I am not sure I understand the reasons, though.

I have really enjoyed reading this! My 'suite' is TeX+Emacs+C (although I write occasional code in Python, Perl, JavaScript, and a few others, a first love is a first love... ) but Kedit and BASIC sound fine to me:)

I especially enjoy the quotes at the end of every chapter. The one on grouping is sublime! How DEK found them all is beyond me.

This description of TeX's process (originally by Knuth himself) is quite tongue in cheek but I fail to see why this makes TeX's programming paradigm 'awful'. Think of it this way: both C and C++ (even Rust has macros, which I heard is the new hotness) have a preprocessor, which is exactly what TeX's 'mouth' is. The fact that the language of the preprocessor looks very similar to the main language does not make it weird (Rust again...). 'Loosely synchronised and on demand' is a very uncharitable description of what is happening: would you call JavaScript paradigm awful just because events are asynchronously processed? One tricky part of TeX is output routines running asynchronously with the main paragraph typesetting algorithm. This is indeed a compromise made by Knuth simply because in his days the thought of keeping the whole book in memory (which is what a perfect page breaking algorithm would require) was pure science fiction. A mildly augmented design will fix this (indeed, some modern implementations offer exactly this) but the solution found by Knuth is still incredibly beautiful. Also, 'the mouth does not do arithmetic' is not true at all. While I am not a big fan of LaTeX, its developers are incredibly talented programmers and they have implemented a fully expandable (in TeX parlance, taking place entirely in its 'mouth') floating point library in TeX (it uses some eTeX extensions for efficiency but they can be avoided as well; I speak from experience, since I do not use eTeX).

Finally, please do not let your fear stop you from enjoying TeX: most users do not do any serious programming and its output is aesthetically superb. If one day you decide to write some tricky macros, there is a vast TeXlore that awaits.

I am not sure what you mean by context-free languages because literally none of the modern languages have context-free grammars. This includes HTML and XML although I would not call them programming languages per se. C++ grammar is undecidable. On the other hand, TeX's core typesetting language (i.e. not using its macro facilities) is context-free. Quite trivial in fact. Pascal, which is the language used to build TeX is context-free (even LL(1)), as well, which cannot be said about, say, C.

I would also be quite hesitant to claim that Knuth, who literally pioneered modern LR parsing theory (and deservedly got a Turing award for it) somehow lacked knowledge or awareness of cutting edge parser design techniques.

Finally, there is absolutely good reasons to design TeX as Knuth did. That TeX withstood the test of time for over three decades is a perfect testimony to that.

I am not going to argue about the tastes here but please consider the fact that TeX is a typesetting language. Ignoring whitespace altogether would make .tex files unreadable (as a comment below states). I am again puzzled by complaints about whitespace treatment in TeX (which has facilities for handling it, like \ignorespaces) at the same time having no objections to the choices made by, say, Python (which to me makes a totally wanton decision about such, also I am not suggesting that you personally are inconsistent in your opinions). Also, poorly written LaTeX macros in this case are not a reason to blame TeX itself.

My experience with TeX is a complete opposite. I feel like I can do pretty much anything in plain TeX, with a very good feel of what it is doing in its 'guts'. I wrote parsers in compilers in pure TeX (the latter was admittedly a silly academic exercise). It took a very thorough reading of 'The TeXbook' but after that I am constantly amazed at how deliberate and tasteful Knuth's choices were. TeX is simply ... elegant. I am not sure what 'modern' bells and whistles TeX lacks that everyone is so eager to see. CSS is a nightmare, even with recent additions, it seems clunky, most of its choices look like an afterthought.

It is also somewhat puzzling that same people who advocate for a better grammar would also push the idea of a better markup. So which is it: a better programming experience or a pure markup language that one wants? I feel TeX strikes a near perfect balance here. Most importantly, TeX has stayed nearly unchanged at its core for almost forty years! It is its greatest strength, not weakness. I cannot see what latest fads can improve in TeX

Doesn't your example support his/her position though? Dump the stock now, wait till the price drops, buy at a reduced price ... profit! I know, timing the market and all that, but this seems like a sensible move now.

Well put. Grade inflation is one of those emerging behaviors that is reinforced by the system as a whole as opposed to individual players. I think one major problem is we equate education with 'college education' which is probably quite harmful.

The problem is such behavior is very heavily disincentivized. I am not sure what the main factor at Harvard is but at public schools the funding of the university depends most heavily on retention. At our university, we are penalized (both in salary and other ways) for students that get Ds and Fs as well as students who withdraw(with no penalty for the student!) from the class. In addition, student evaluations play a huge role in this process and the easiest way to get a good evaluation is to give easy grades. Guess what kind of grading policy this promotes...

By the way, the reason retention, as opposed to the quality is valued is also simple. The ranking of the state 'in education' is measured by the number of diplomas given out by the institutions in the state. So more diplomas---better education ratings of the state. Thus encouraging faculty to pass students is a rational strategy. I am surprised we are not just giving students all As without any tests whatsoever. Would make my life so much easier. For a while ...

ICAO is the certifying authority, FAA and EASA (and hundreds of other national certification bodies) have agreements that allow for the certification results done on the national level to be accepted by ICAO. I totally agree about the significance of strict standards.

Technically, `hopping back on' you would still be violating the law because the Basic Med allows you to self-certify but the rules are the same. On the other hand you can pay for SI once and then switch to Basic Med (since the rules are that you had a valid 3rd class medical before switching to Basic Med). There are many AMEs around, talk to another one but do not reveal your plans after you get the medical.

Technically speaking, the engines you are referring to are turbine (not jet). There are two types of turbine engines: turbojets and turboprops. The first ones produce a significant portion of the thrust via jet exhaust (even though high bypass jets are close to prop engines). Even turboprops (like the popular Garrets and PT6's) produce about 10 percent of their thrust through jet exhaust.

To be even more technical, the difference between turbine and piston engines is in the combustion chamber: open combustion in the case of a turbine and closed in the case of a piston.

Finally, there are turbine engines that run just fine on LL100 (leaded avgas). Garrets, for example. One can even mix gas and jet-A in those. It is not recommended to run avgas for more than 1000 hours though due to potential issues with lead deposits. Some military jets engines are designed to run on almost anything combustible except maybe coal dust (I am exaggerating somewhat, of course).

True. This is why I advise all of my students who want to be casual fliers only (i.e. not flying for hire) to switch to Basic Med. No need to seek out an AME (any family doctor can do it) and the appointment is only every four years (instead of every two if you are over 45). Even flight instructors can instruct with Basic Med.

Thank you for the links but just to clarify: I have to send each student a random individual password (so that they can login to set up their test taking software). The password is currently generated by a script that then proceeds to email it to each student. Sometimes I have to send individualized assignments (also randomly generated by computer algebra software). My personal email server makes it straightforward but I do not see how it is possible with MS. I guess a cleverly written IMAP client can do that for me but I cannot use IMAP, alas. The university policy is basically 'disable everything that can make using outlook bearable' (this last sentence should compensate for the ambiguous grammar you pointed out :)

As I mention in my post, this is the setting our admins chose so I do not blame MS for this (they support both, I know). Another setting they chose is to delete emails over six months of age and there is nothing I can do about it either.

The search and the interface are entirely the fault of MS as are the lack of more subtle features such as mass emails (which I have to use often while teaching online).

I would agree that setting up a robust personal email system is difficult and may be exceedingly so for an organization of any significant size but I am not sure I would attribute that to the quality of services from large providers. Our organization (a university) outsourced its email to MS (outlook) and it is simply awful. No IMAP or POP, no forwarding (this is of course the policy of the university, not MS' fault per se), important emails getting lost as 'spam' (including some once in a lifetime conference invitations) just because they came from the outside. The search is a complete nightmare. No way to send mass emails to one's class with, say individually generated temporary passwords, which I can easily do from my own server. The interface is clunky to say the least. In comparison, even Thunderbird shines (although why TB cannot implement its quick search function for years now is beyond me). So it is not the quality that the big providers supply. Security, maybe (even though they are a large target by default) but not convenience.

Indeed. I truly hope that PineNote takes off: https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/

I would second this. Framework seems to be intent on creating a laptop that is easy to repair and upgrade. It has some unique features, too, like extension cards. Depending on what one needs it is possible to have, say, 4 USB-A ports or 4 HDMA ones. The only fly in the ointment as I see it is the lack of Coreboot support although they promise to work on it.

Indeed, I was going to say exactly this but I am glad I found your comment instead. The first question in the interview is about the reason good typesetting was important to Knuth and the .pdf sort of answers it. It is an excellent read but a bit painful to look at. Proper typesetting of TeX and LaTeX would go a long way to alleviate that, not to mention jagged vertical spacing in the titles and elsewhere.

The author does not say 'conflict', he uses 'contrast' instead which is perfectly justified. Your subtly offensive (a)-(g) list seems to imply that the reasons for this contrast are rooted solely in the emotions of those who use LaTeX. I am fine with that but I am not sure I would agree with your (a): for me it is more like 10 min with a keyboard vs 2 hrs with a mouse.

To make some counterpoints:

- On any device as long as it runs a browser

- You can write TeX documents as a single file with ease

- Phones are not designed for reading, so dynamic layout or not, it will still be inferior to finely typeset document

- With care so can be TeX; carelessly written HTML docs will be just as bad as anything else

- CSS is a pretty poor layout tool; typographically speaking, CSS is very subpar to TeX's capabilities, using JS... well how much better is it than just using macros in TeX/LaTeX?

- markdown is fine for simple stuff but for highly complicated documents involving lots of generated tables, lists, and mathematics it is almost like having no tool at all;

- but many people DO like printed documents (I rarely can stand reading anything but basic technical stuff on screen, say language reference is fine but anything that requires thinking, has to be printed);

TeX is not locked to pdf in any way (it is not even it's native format). HTML's support for formulas is primitive (the only decent tools available are ... based on TeX). Academic world is not entirely uniform either but while I do think LaTeX is not ideal (TeX is though), I simply shudder when I think about Word or any MS or Adobe products.

I would like to second this great advice. A somewhat shorter piece of reading is 'Mathematical typography' by Knuth (published in the Bulletin of the AMS but I believe is freely available online). This article outlines the (enormous) scope of the problem (even before multilanguage typography is considered, or any graphics for that matter).

I respect your courage but I have to disagree with your assessment of CSS vs real typography. Layout capabilities of CSS are orders of magnitude less extensive compared to those of TeX. For example it is nearly impossible to say, put a box 2/3 of the width of a container of unknown width. Just the simple task of centering an element has pages dedicated to it and to my knowledge, only CSS3 has a reasonably workable solution. As far as LaTeX's abilities as a programming language go, I have an interpreter for a reasonable subset of C written in TeX (it was an academic exercise but this is just to show what is possible). So it is much more than a mere markup language.

Indeed, one look at the comments would unveil a whole lot of shortcomings to their methodology. One of which was an entirely opaque way in which they defined 'errors in typesetting'.

I would also point out that most of his troubles stem from the somewhat amateurish approach to using LaTeX. Overfull boxes can be handled by relaxing the typographic requirements. If one desires the typesetting quality of MS Word and quicker builds, this can be easily arranged by manipulating \emergencystretch and such. LaTeX is not an editor, and the use of a carefully designed style would go a long way to eliminate most of his concerns. But proclaiming 'do not write documents in LaTeX, use Word instead' is just subjective garbage, to use his own terminology. Disclaimer: I do not particularly like LaTeX and prefer plain TeX myself.

True, the first order logic is unique in that it satisfies compactness and L-S. Extending the language to second order language (although this is not quite standard terminology) is a whole new ball of wax since the concept of a model changes as well. You can introduce a quantifier over 'unique' reals but this is a rather hollow extension since the nature of that quantifier remains just as vague. I also fail to see why the uniqueness of reals is so important. Using second order language you would have to forcefully / 'declare' every such object.

> it seems to me that the thing to do is to extend your language until it can.

This depends on what you mean by define. If you mean a unique model than this is impossible. The reason is compactness theorem (every theory in which every finite set of formulas has a model has a model). The basic idea is to add constants and introduce axioms stating they are different. This will allow models of, say reals where there are plenty of reals that are not real reals (sorry for the pun, I could not resist). Nonstandard analysis takes it a bit further and makes it a bit more precise and useable.

If you mean you want to deal with (naively) definable reals only then intuitively there are only countably many of those that you can define (by formulas, etc) and you are missing a huge chunk of the real line again.

I should have said that one cannot prove this in ZFC (of course there may be models of ZFC in which this is true) since that would meant one can prove Con ZFC in ZFC. Mostowski's theorems however are provable in ZFC and are enough for the arithmetic proofs that are produced by the method of forcing.