Ahh, now that you put it that way, yes, I think you are exactly right. For me, the real reason I started to use LaTeX had nothing to do with document formatting

Ahh, now that you put it that way, yes, I think you are exactly right. For me, the real reason I started to use LaTeX had nothing to do with document formatting, which I had already figured out how to do with plain TeX (writing a 200-page thesis in it). It was the automatic handling of equation numbers and other labels.