Jacob Eisenstein is wondering at the madness that has overtaken the academic world. He wonders why in the world they are depending on someone else’s computer and SaaS to do one of their most important jobs: writing and publishing papers.

But it’s great for interdisciplinary research. I cannot possibly ask my social & political scientist colleagues to learn #emacs #git for paper writing. So the choice is either overleaf or sharing word documents. — Tanu Mitra (@tanmit) February 7, 2020

For context, the ICML is the International Conference on Machine Learning and the “ICML deadline” refers to last date for submitting papers to the 2020 conference. Eisenstein’s question is well taken. These are computer scientists and using tools like Emacs and Git is certainly within their skill set. Instead they chose to depend on someone else’s computer and software, which inconveniently became inaccessible just prior to the submission date of one of their major conferences.

Most disturbing, though, is the response. I’m sure it’s true that Overleaf is great for collaboration and at least they’re writing in LaTeX—instead of the monstrosity that must not be named—but (1) we’re not talking about social and political scientists here; we’re talking about computer scientists and (2) it’s simply not true that people in the “soft” sciences can’t learn Emacs and Git. Irreal often publishes stories about people in the liberal arts and social sciences doing exactly that.

None of this is to say that computer scientists, let alone social or political scientists, must write in Emacs or collaborate through Git. The point is what it always is when I’m on this particular rant: if you’re committing writing that you care about to a third party for processing and safekeeping, you’re asking for trouble. In this case, the trouble probably wasn’t too severe but as I’ve argued elsewhere, it could have been. The answer is also the same as it always is: use open-source/open-standards software on a computer you control. Anything else is reckless.