Besides telling you about what it’s like to be a CS student trying to complete a bachelors degree via distance ed, I’d like to share tips for getting academic work done easier and faster. At the top of the list for students of computer science is this: learn how to write papers in LaTeX.

One of the features of a true computer science program is that a lot of the courses are theory-heavy. That is, they don’t deal with computers or languages as much as they deal with the ideas behind how to compute things. As you might expect, there is a good deal of math involved in this. Discrete mathematics, data structures, and analysis of algorithms are the foundation of a true computer science degree. If you’re involved in these classes, you’re going to find yourself dealing with some pretty hairy formulas and symbols that aren’t necessarily part of any word processing program. It doesn’t matter how well you know Word, it isn’t going to make your job any easier.

My introduction to LaTeX (which is pronounced lay-tek) was a class called “Introduction to Cryptography.” Not knowing any better, I did my first homework assignment in Word and it was a royal pain in the ass. The main problem came from trying to enter in all of the formulas and then edit and align them so they looked decent. I became frustrated and asked my TF for a suggestion. He clued me in to LaTeX.

LaTeX can best be described as a programming language for documents. You use a special markup language (similar to HTML) to enter text and formulas and specify the formatting of a document. It sounds complicated (and it is) but once you know it, it’s easy to create documents with very complex formulas in a snap.

Here’s an example:

And another:

,

One more:

See what I mean? Try doing that in Word. You can, but it’ll take you a lot longer and be much more frustrating to accomplish.

If you want to save time, invest a little now and learn LaTeX. LaTeX has a bit of a learning curve but it’s not impossible. You can get started writing documents in a day or two but you’ll need a reference book to really get the most out of it. I recommend two particular texts: The LaTeX Companion and Math Into LaTeX.

Your professors, TF, and classmates are probably using it already. Free implementations are everywhere. Learn it. You’ll thank me.