Join me on my crusade to eliminate the use of 'former' and 'latter' in any writing unless the goal is obfuscation. It's error prone, almost always requires rereading, and never is the clearest choice.
Here's my attempt at a clearer version:
"Take Postscript vs PDF. Postscript is Turing-complete and therefore you cannot jump to an arbitrary page or even know how many pages the document has without running the entire thing first."
Pronouns are fine. Substituting 'the first' and 'the second' would be an improvement. It's specifically 'former' and 'latter' that should be deprecated. I'd be interested in seeing a study comparing readers' comprehensions of the various phrasings. What cost in clarity would you be willing to pay?
