Word Is for Writers. LaTeX Is for Academics. Neither Is for Developers.

There's a third option, and it lives in the editor you already have open. Pick any developer who regularly writes documents longer than a README. Ask them what they use. You'll get one of three answers: Word (reluctantly), Google Docs (with apologetic hand-waving about version control), or LaTeX (with the haunted look of someone who has debugged one too many undefined control sequence errors at midnight). None of them will say they enjoy it. The reason is simple: all three tools were built for someone else. The Wrong Tools for the Job Word was designed for typing letters. Its fundamental model (WYSIWYG editing where formatting is baked directly into the document) hasn't changed since the early nineties. That works fine if you need to print a letter. It falls apart when you need to version-control a contract, keep styling consistent across a 30-page document touched by six people, or reproduce the same report next quarter without reformatting it from scratch. LaTeX is the other extreme.