I have added tooling so that I can get code listings into / out of the textbook that I'm writing so that I can easily and make sure that they work and produce correct code.
And I'm doing it in LaTeX so I have templates doing some work.
But it's sure nice to just be able to type `make` and see a pdf pop out and green unit tests on the code 3-4 minutes later.
(I have also standardized TODO things to make them easily searchable and show up in a distinctive style in the manuscript).
Is there a word for the right amount of engineering? Kind of a negative concept of not engaging in performative conceptualization. Just doing it in a way that the implementation was natural and not worth writing home about.
Wikipedia's introductory paragraph to the subject includes the following sentence:
> Engineering involves balancing competing demands such as safety, performance, aesthetics, cost, laws and regulations, and time, while operating within fundamental limits such as the laws of physics.
I realize the word is overloaded now and that people are confusing writing programs and other cerebral pursuits with engineering, but that doesn't change its original definition.
I think there’s value in the concept of “an uninteresting amount”. When I cooked breakfast I used my stove and a pan and stuff and I put some seasoning on. Even though I enjoyed my morning routine, I’m unable to produce any fascinating trivia about the process or the result.
I finished a BSc and an MSc with quarto and fossil. It had to be in Word so I wrote a VBA script that pulled comments so I could edit my markdown files easier.
I built Mark2TeX while writing my thesis in Obsidian. I wanted to write the prose in Markdown, but keep a normal LuaLaTeX document for math, citations, cross-references, etc.
So Mark2TeX lets me use Markdown-like files and drop into real LaTeX whenever I need it.
I deliberately didn't try to build a complete Markdown/Pandoc replacement. It's basically an attempt to under-engineer the Markdown/LaTeX boundary.
The related Over Engineering Post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335292
Does seem like overkill but everyone scratches their own itch.
> overkill
To write my hard sci-fi novel, I wrote a cross-platform Markdown editor so that I could use interpolated variables along with R code:
https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html
Uses ConTeXt to produce PDF files. I also developed a few calculators to help confirm physics and other plot-related aspects:
https://autonoma.ca/calculators/
I have added tooling so that I can get code listings into / out of the textbook that I'm writing so that I can easily and make sure that they work and produce correct code.
And I'm doing it in LaTeX so I have templates doing some work.
But it's sure nice to just be able to type `make` and see a pdf pop out and green unit tests on the code 3-4 minutes later.
(I have also standardized TODO things to make them easily searchable and show up in a distinctive style in the manuscript).
Is there a word for the right amount of engineering? Kind of a negative concept of not engaging in performative conceptualization. Just doing it in a way that the implementation was natural and not worth writing home about.
Yeah. It's "engineering".
Wikipedia's introductory paragraph to the subject includes the following sentence:
> Engineering involves balancing competing demands such as safety, performance, aesthetics, cost, laws and regulations, and time, while operating within fundamental limits such as the laws of physics.
(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering)
I realize the word is overloaded now and that people are confusing writing programs and other cerebral pursuits with engineering, but that doesn't change its original definition.
Good question, sometimes engineering that leads to a creation which is “purpose built”.
This is arguably what MVP is supposedly to mean
Even-engineering?
I think there’s value in the concept of “an uninteresting amount”. When I cooked breakfast I used my stove and a pan and stuff and I put some seasoning on. Even though I enjoyed my morning routine, I’m unable to produce any fascinating trivia about the process or the result.
I finished a BSc and an MSc with quarto and fossil. It had to be in Word so I wrote a VBA script that pulled comments so I could edit my markdown files easier.
And here I've just been using pen/paper for outlining and notes and then GoogleDocs for mine.
Why not Markdown - pandoc - epub/pdf?
Not OP but probably to be able to tweak the layout without having a doctorate in LaTeX templates.
Presumably because the publisher takes the manuscript and does all the formatting and so on.
As an aside, timelapse videos like this are a useful proof of thoughtfulness in the age of AI slop
This is very close to the philosophy behind something I've been building:
https://github.com/simonschnake/Mark2Tex
I built Mark2TeX while writing my thesis in Obsidian. I wanted to write the prose in Markdown, but keep a normal LuaLaTeX document for math, citations, cross-references, etc.
So Mark2TeX lets me use Markdown-like files and drop into real LaTeX whenever I need it.
I deliberately didn't try to build a complete Markdown/Pandoc replacement. It's basically an attempt to under-engineer the Markdown/LaTeX boundary.