LaTeX's selling point is, it allows someone(publisher, conference committee, school, professor) to set what is acceptable typesetting and rest of us can focus o

LaTeX's selling point is, it allows someone(publisher, conference committee, school, professor) to set what is acceptable typesetting and rest of us can focus on the content. ConTeXt is excellent if you care about design -- visual, layout, use of non-traditional typeface families, non-traditional print medium, create magazines, glossies, etc.,. Writing a new style, class etc., for LaTeX feels like it's for "experts only". On the other hand, extending and creating new styles etc., for ConTeXt is much more natural part of creating the document. ConTeXt is also highly programmable and extensible using Lua, XML(think machine generated catalogue). With Metapost (graphics language), you can create highly sophistical vector diagrams. I have found pgf/tikz to be highly opinionated and it take much more upfront learning compared to metapost. ConTeXt is also more intuitive, IMHO.