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I feel like TeX is another example of https://x.com/danluu/status/1356056197963554816.

People praise it for its simplicity and elegance, but then you look for how to do something simple like print a "~", and you get this horrible hack (https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/9372/327326) which has been replaced by a "canonical answer" which is also a horrible hack that many people report doesn't work for them (https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/312/327326).

This elegant canonical answer covers 3 cases (and doesn't work if you don't fall into one of the cases) and