Curious about the suggestion to try plain TeX. Could you expand on what are the advantages? Do you mean it as a learning stepping stone or for actual usage?
I wanted to answer your question properly and in detail, but will settle for a somewhat cryptic response (sorry): in short, by using plain TeX instead of LaTeX, you get a workflow where you have a better understanding of what's going on, more control, less fighting the system, much better error messages (as they're now actually related to the code you type, not to macros you didn't write and haven't seen), less craziness of TeX macros (please program in a real language and generate TeX), faster processing (compile time in milliseconds), opportunity to unlearn LaTeX and possibly consider systems like ConTeXt, more fun etc. (Some earlier related comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191)