So many good words, but they all miss the crucial point: you can't write a parser for org-mode. So elisp interpreted is needed to run the lisp code that defines it. It means that org-mode can be good while you are using it from emacs, and it sucks for anything else.
I use markdown now, because you have a lot of tools to deal with markdown, while all tools for org-mode are bound to emacs. Which is perfectly fits the emacs philosophy of emacs being an operating system, but it is not for me. It was fun 20 years ago, but now when I'm thinking of tinkering with emacs configuration for hours to get anything done, I feel an impulse to run away.
I also don't use org-mode anymore, but sometimes I really do miss org-babel-tangle. In contexts where doctests aren't available it can be really helpful for making sure code listings actually work.