It's a trade off. Getting proficient with a new subject requires time and mental space, one that could be otherwise used for doing other things, usually things much more interesting to you unless you happen to be excited by doing TeX stuff. That's why one would usually opt for "just do whatever is needed to get over with it".

> It's similar to using emacs or vim. You could say, "Why should programming devotees expect others to adopt those editors?"

Exactly. There were times when I wrote emacs lisp and vim macros, and had time to dive into arcane mechanics of it. I don't have that luxury anymore. I need the editor to just work and do what I need to be done, without me investing significant time into it. Maybe if I spend couple of days on learning stuff about vim I could do in one minute when now I do in ten, but I'm not sure it pays off anymore, and frankly I have more interesting things to learn. I do use vim (not emacs anymore) but for me I came to the conclusion that added value of diving into the arcana with the goal of being more efficient later vs. brute-forcing through the immediate tasks is just not worth it. Later you'd need a different thing than you thought you'd need anyway.

And, note, I am a programmer. I can imagine how less interested would be a person who does not spend their days digging into the code anyway.