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I have never really understood why people love latex.

I think latex serves an important role in scientific community in establishing a consistent way of presenting a scientific writing. However, unlike what it does in presentation the way in which you can write the latex code it self is very inconsistent and depend heavily on foreign packages where there are multiple packages that does the same job.

I think this complicates writing a latex code especially when you are writing a latex code in a group.

I also find the latex protocol difficult to understand and I do not understand why the protocol of latex can not be as simple as other programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Python or Java where the protocol and syntax are so simple and consistent they are almost intuitive.

I can imagine how this inconsistency in the source code of latex can be frustrating for many data scientists who are trying to scrape data from source code of scientific writings.

I think the fact StackExchange and Jupyter uses HTML when presenting normal text shows how most people prefer to write text in HTML like xml code. I fail to understand why the Latex has such a complex syntax and protocols and also why a language so frequently used by scientists, including computer scientists, have not been replaced by a new intuitive language for so long.

I want to hear some explanations for this. Maybe its just me who doesn't understand the fundamental of latex protocol and thus finding it more complex than it actually is so I would appreciate some sources in intuitively understanding the latex protocol/syntax.
I would like to know the historical mechanism on how the community came to be as such.

Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor
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    Well, I've never understood why people love Microsoft Word (and even spend their free time writing clones of it like Open Office etc) - but this isn't a good place to ask opinion-based questions! – alephzero Sep 24 '18 at 18:39
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    Naively, I would insist that the rules of good typesetting are not the same as the rules of good webpage design. Also, people here, I would think, see the package-based language extensions as providing flexibility to address new problem areas, rather than seeing it as a negative that muddies the overall language syntax. – Steven B. Segletes Sep 24 '18 at 18:39
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    I don't really think this is an opinion based question because I'm interested in what have prevented people from making an alternative for such a long time. And I think the existance of Latex3 project shows that many feels the same way as I do. – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 18:40
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    many of the LaTeX 3 authors are creators of quite popular packages, so I don't think that they see that as a problem. the possibility to create custom packages and commands are exactly the reason why people who invested their time and effort to learn TeX and LaTeX love it an find it superior to for example Markdown or HTML + CSS – michal.h21 Sep 24 '18 at 18:50
  • There are multiple python packages to parse xml providing different functions with different syntax, yet no one complains about the redundancy of having multiple modules to parse xml (“XML is a classic political compromise: it balances the needs of man and machine by being equally unreadable to both.” – Matthew Might). – Skillmon Sep 24 '18 at 18:51
  • I think it is safe to say, the modern trend is to try and provide as much core / official libraries as possible as seen in modern language such as goLang. – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 18:53
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    Also: (La)TeX has a huge user basis, is a well established solution, and most importantly: there is no real competitor or alternative which does things so much better that it is worth investing millions of hours into it. (Not that there is nothing of real significance that does things much better, up till now I didn't find something which does the hard things better at all) – Skillmon Sep 24 '18 at 18:53
  • What I really don't understand is why are there no competitors? Latex is not a perfect solution, so I would have thought the natural response is to make a better solution. I'm not here to insult Latex, but this kind of things just happens all the time in other programming languages, so I would have thought the same for latex. – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 19:04
  • There are competitors. E.g. context. – Ulrike Fischer Sep 24 '18 at 19:07
  • There are competitors. Ej: SILE. – Fran Sep 24 '18 at 19:10
  • I'm just gonna make a competitor my self – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 19:13
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    Maybe worth it to read: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/398372/117050 – Skillmon Sep 24 '18 at 19:25
  • I appreciate for all the comments – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 19:26
  • @Fran while SILE is a competitor it has its use cases in niches (well, I think bible typesetting is not really a niche as there are more bibles than scientific journals...), I think it is unlikely that it takes over in scientific writing. – Skillmon Sep 24 '18 at 19:34
  • I will be writing a compiler for a language that compiles into latex as a hobby, because personally I've had enough with latexnic approach and make a better world. – Wanting to be anAndroidDevelor Sep 24 '18 at 19:38
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    There are too many questions/comments here: (1) Why do people still use LaTeX? [in the title], (2) Why people love LaTeX (first line), (3) Comments on the inconvenience of LaTeX input (syntax) (and “protocol” though it's not sure what that means here), (4) Speculation ("I can imagine...") about other's frustration and preferences, (5) Why LaTeX syntax is complicated, (6) Why it has not been replaced by something easier (7) “I would appreciate some sources in intuitively understanding the latex protocol/syntax”. And in the comments, (6), also related (8): why there are no competitors. – ShreevatsaR Sep 24 '18 at 20:26
  • So a question covering so many topics is probably a poor fit for this site. That said, welcome to this site & good luck with your difficulties! :-) Yes LaTeX can be complicated but also simple, and I think you'll find that not everyone who uses it loves it. Fundamentally typesetting with high (print) quality is more difficult than putting text on a web page without caring much about how well paragraphs are justified, whether there are widows and orphans, etc — you may not need all this, and may be happier with a simpler system. Or you may just not have learned LaTeX properly. Or both. – ShreevatsaR Sep 24 '18 at 20:35
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    You might be much happier with ConTeXt. While the syntax is very consistent it almost feels like writing XML. Nevertheless, you get TeX's typesetting abilities. So before writing something on your own that compiles to LaTeX (which might turn out to be as "interesting" as pylatex) you should evaluate the alternatives. – TeXnician Sep 24 '18 at 20:35
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    some very strange statements here! "I think the existance of Latex3 project shows that many feels the same way as I do" is perhaps the strangest:-) the L3 project has been maintaining latex since sometime around 1992, why does that show anything about why people feel the way you do? and also "StackExchange and Jupyter uses HTML when presenting normal text shows how most people prefer to write text in HTML" It shows the exact opposite, in those systems people do not write html they write in a linear wiki syntax that is more like tex than html, and in the case of mathematics is tex syntax. – David Carlisle Sep 24 '18 at 23:56

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