It's funny to see this sentiment wax and wane with Intel's market fortunes. In the early 2010s on this site, with Intel riding high, you'd see lots of comments

It's funny to see this sentiment wax and wane with Intel's market fortunes. In the early 2010s on this site, with Intel riding high, you'd see lots of comments talking about how x86 was just months away from killing ARM for good on account of a better technical design. Now it's the reverse: people are treating x86 as a horrible dinosaur of an architecture that's on its last legs. Personally, I think x86 is pretty ugly, but both compilers and chip designers have done an admirable job taming it, so it's not that bad. Process/fabrication concerns tend to dominate nowadays.