In my experience, the hiccups with packages are of a different kind than those with LaTeX packages. They’re more often “normal programming” hiccups where a function is poorly-documented, or there’s simply a bug. LaTeX packages can cause bigger problems: even usepackage-ing them can do arbitrary ‘stuff’ and have weird nonlocal effects that are basically undebuggable. Oftentimes two packages will just be incompatible, which should not ever be the case in a sensible programming language.
Pros:
- Instant compile. It just sits there waiting, and once you save your .typ, boom, your .pdf is ready.
- Surprisingly often I find myself using it as markdown replacement, e.g., for random meeting notes. Syntax is as easy as markdown and without boilerplate it produces a nice pdf.
What's not to like?
- IMO debugging can be tricky with quite concise error messages. And it does not produce any pdf once there is a single syntax error, precluding one favourite latex debugging route.
- When using packages, one does encounter hickups, but no surprise here for long-time latex users.