What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Angrboda]

I worked in the document department of a biomedical firm in the late 80s.  We had Wordstar.  We composed the formulas used in manufacturing the product with a combination of ascii characters, sub and superscripting, and backspacing over previous marks.   You don't know how good you have it.

I typed my mathematics dissertation on a manual typewriter, exchanging font balls whenever I needed a math symbol.

Almost all professional mathematics is written in LaTeX, which is a typesetting program written in the 1970's. it has a number of front and back ends, but it is still very far from WYSIWYG.

It does make things look nice, though.

I've yet to have the patience to learn how to use LaTeX. Hell, I haven't even bothered to learn nroff/troff. There was a point in my life when such would have been useful. For good or ill, that time has passed.