In the field of Theoretical Computer Science it is standard to write scientific papers in LaTeX. However, there are still quite a few options when deciding what software to use to create the text, images, or conference presentations. I asked several people during CCC 2023 ↗ about this.
Up-to-date compilation of tools can be found in Material section.
Assuming we talk about collaborative works, majority of questioned people write their papers in Overleaf ↗. It is an order of magnitude more accessible than other setups. Other approaches involve having a local editing software together with a versioning and collaboration support – typically Git ↗. The small number of people that edit locally used VS Code ↗, TeXstudio ↗, Emacs ↗, Vim ↗, and Neovim ↗. Only TeXstudio comes with LaTeX support by default, rest have plugins that handle useful features such as compilation, forward and backward search, or completion.
To create generated pictures people mention TikZ ↗ latex package, Matplotlib ↗ and NetworkX ↗ python libraries, and also people used ChatGPT ↗ to kick-start code in TikZ that is then edited by hand. Drawing “by hand” may be done using Ipe ↗ editor, Inkscape ↗, or online tools like draw.io ↗ and GeoGebra ↗ (with TikZ export), For preparation of basic pictures and the text Mathcha ↗ was mentioned.
To prepare presentations people mainly mention LaTeX package Beamer ↗. If not beamer, then it is usual they use software based on the used system – PowerPoint ↗, Libreoffice ↗, and Keynote ↗.