Tikz is fantastic if you know exactly what you want to draw. However in the case of many academic papers and presentations, the author doesn’t know exactly what they want to draw until after most of the graphics are made - only then can you observe some changes that can be made to make everything more consistent (not consistent with respect to line widths, colours, and whatever, I mean more consistent as in “tells a consistent story”). Tikz is awful for this - the amount of time one has to spend trying to edit a single graphic is so so much higher than with any other visual vector graphics program (Inkscape, Ipe, Illustrator, etc). It means that for many people, even if something looks out-of-place in the larger context of a paper or presentation, they won’t change it because it’s too hard. If you spent 20 minutes making a graphic with any other tool, then down the road if you feel it would be done better a completely different way, it’s fine to chuck it out and go again. With Tikz, making graphics can take much longer (this is doubly true if your edits are taking place outside of that one week you had Tikz loaded into your brain), and authors are much more reluctant to throw away work to improve a final result.
It’s because of this that I think working with Tikz (or other very-high-friction-for-most-people tools) is to the detriment of the end product. Being able to be agile, especially when displaying technical and complicated graphics, is paramount to those graphics ending up good.
It’s because of this that I think working with Tikz (or other very-high-friction-for-most-people tools) is to the detriment of the end product. Being able to be agile, especially when displaying technical and complicated graphics, is paramount to those graphics ending up good.