Overleaf has decent tab completion and dozens of templates, as well as limited support for markdown. Let tabnine and copilot get to LaTeX; I think we’ll find the discoverability of “text language on Adderall” outguns GUIs.
No way. Nothing can outgun typing a parameter into a box rather than the visual clutter of braces (or some other delimiter). What's more, maths notation often involves objects of different sizes, which isn't reflected in any fixed-width text language. Equations in my PhD were often 80% about the subscripts/superscripts if you read the raw LaTeX, with the most important stuff buried away; but when you look at the equation as rendered, or in a GUI, the most important bits are trivial to read off.
> lyx as a hard to get into GUI
I only suggest LyX is hard to get into because some people only get into it at a surface level, which it's actually very easy to get into but then you don't get all the benefits of LaTeX. Best case scenario is you know both LaTeX and how to use LyX, then you can spend 1% of your time writing bits of LaTeX (in the preamble, or using math macros [1], or directly including the odd snippet of raw LaTeX as a last resort (even then put them within an instant preview)) and 99% of your time using the GUI.
Basically the reverse of your usage as the learning went on, and then finally going to pure LaTeX sometime in the foggy past.
{
\def \l {\mathrm{l}}
\def \r {\mathrm{r}}
\def \Bl {\mathrm{Bl}}
\def \Br {\mathrm{Br}}
\def \B {\mathrm{B}}
\def \nIIom {n_{2\omega}}
\begin{equation}\label{eq:interface_conditions}
\begin{aligned}
F_{1\l} &= F_{2\r} + F_{2\l} \exp (i\,k_2 L) + F_{\Br} + F_{\Bl} \exp(i\,k_\B L) \\
F_{1\r} &= -\nIIom \, F_{2\r} + \nIIom \, F_{2\l} \exp (i\,k_2 L) - \nIIom \, F_{\Br} +
\nIIom \, F_{\Bl} \exp(i\,k_\B L)\\
F_{3\r} &= F_{2\r} \exp (i\,k_2 L) + F_{2\l} + F_{\Br} \exp(i\,k_\B L) + F_{\Bl} \\
-F_{3\l} &= \nIIom \, F_{2\r} \exp (i\,k_2 L) + \nIIom \, F_{2\l} -
\nIIom \, F_{\Br} \exp(i\,k_\B L) + \nIIom \, F_{\Bl}
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
}
F_{1\mathrm{l}} &= F_{2\mathrm{r}} + F_{2\mathrm{l}} \exp (i\,k_2 L) + F_{\mathrm{Br}} + F_{\mathrm{Bl}} \exp(i\,k_\mathrm{B} L)
...
On the other hand, you don't write complicated mathematical equations quickly if you've got any sense anyway.
I don't get this line of reasoning. Writing equations is hard, so what difference does it make if you make it a lot harder? I think the fact it's hard makes it even more important to make it easier to write!
Proofreading / editing (as opposed to writing) is even more severe. When using raw LaTeX, there's absolutely no way you can be sure the equation is right without checking the PDF, so you end up in a slow loop of typesetting (the whole document!), read something for a while, go back to the LaTeX to fix something you've found, spend a while finding where the problem is, etc.; in LyX you're just organically reading and editing the document. If you spot an incorrect subscript, you just click on it and fix it then carry on reading. In raw LaTeX that can 100 times as long, or even longer still if you take into account the context switch of your mind.
And I second your endorsement of Overleaf. I had to write a research proposal a few weeks back for work after not touching academic writing for 7 years. Overleaf made the process relatively painless.