I'm not criticizing the power of TeX in terms of typesetting, I'm only referring to the _language_ here. (And you are aboslutely right, Org and other markup languages are not competing with TeX.)
Imaging the capabilities of TeX with a good programming language.
I don't find WEB beautiful. In my opinion, literate programming (at least in this case) is a pretext to hide a terrible, unexpressive programming language.
As you're saying, Emacs had the good taste to use a Lisp back in those days, so it really is a pity that TeX didn't.
Well, I agree a Lisp or at least more Lispy interface with TeX would be much preferable. But I am dubious how anything comparable to TeX and the TeX-ecosystem would be developed at this point.
Imaging the capabilities of TeX with a good programming language.
I don't find WEB beautiful. In my opinion, literate programming (at least in this case) is a pretext to hide a terrible, unexpressive programming language.
As you're saying, Emacs had the good taste to use a Lisp back in those days, so it really is a pity that TeX didn't.