Word vs. latex, what is the difference?

 There are at least two major document typesettings available used in the reality which are MS Word and LaTeX. Both programs have a large fanbase and it depends on the personal judgement which is prefered. What is missing in the debate is a general description about the differences. The only thing what is sure is, that Word and LaTeX are operating with different design principles. So let us summarize what the idea behind the latex typesetting system is:
1. open source
2. strict seperation between edit and rendering mode
3. high quality in both modes

Now it is possible to explain these features in detail. The first criteria is, that latex is provided under a gpl license while MS Word is distributed in a commercial fashion. An open source clone to word is libreoffice.

The second and third feature on the list are important to understand the interaction with the system. The main feature of the latex ecosystem is, that the user has to switch back and forth between two modes: editing and viewing. The editing mode has much in common with the draft view known in word. The difference is, that in case of latex the differences are emphasized. Editing in a latex editor means usually to use a monospace font, hide the images completely and avoid justification and hyphenation of the paragraph. What latex users are prefering is ironically that during editing there is no typography at all. That means, the hyphenation is wrong because it is missing, the spaces between the words is always the same and the vertical spaces between the paragraphs is always the same.

All the typographic enhancement are only visible in the rendering mode. The user has to press the preview button and then he sees the the DVI / PDF output on the screen which contains of hyphonation, justification and float images. This two mode philosophy is the core element of LaTeX typesetting.

So the underlying question is if there is a need for two modes in word processing or is a single mode (which is usually available in WYSIGYG DTP software enough)?

the main reaosn why this two mode interaction was introduced is because it simplifies the man machine communitcation and it makes it easier to program the software. In latex there are different front end / backend combination available. The user can run a lyx instance combined with lualatex or he has use texmaker in combination with the pdflatex backend. This allows to program a text editor and a text renderer as different project. This is perhaps one of the strengths of latex because each project can be made more feature complete.  In contrast, the GUI based Word software combines the editing and the rendering capability in a single program. From a cynical perspective this results into a medum quality draft mode plus a medium quality typesetting quality. What latex users are prefering is a high quality draft mode plus a high quality layout.