[smulloni]

I've formatted ~100 non-scientific books with LaTeX, including poetry and experimental/avant-garde fiction that makes considerable layout demands. I have yet to run into a problem that could not be solved. It isn't always the best tool for the job — for layouts with lots of images that need to be precisely placed with text, something like Affinity Publisher or InDesign would be a shorter path to the right result — but it's an amazing and remarkably painless system. If you are producing "incredibly inelegant bloat code" with it, I'd hazard that something other than LaTeX itself is responsible.

[starkparker]

I mean, good for you and congrats, so you must be right. Something other than LaTeX must be responsible for so many non-academics and non-technical people bouncing so hard off of it for almost any other tool. It can't possibly be anything related to LaTeX because if you're so good at it, anyone can be.