"Assembly language of FFmpeg" leads me to think of -filter_complex. It's not for human consumption even once you know many of its gotchas (-ss and keyframes, PTS, labeling and using chain outputs, fading, mixing resolutions etc).
But then again no-one is adjusting timestamps manually in batch scripts, so a high-level script on top of filter_complex doesn't have much purpose.
For some reason, when ffmpeg reencodes from 23.97fps h264 to the same fps and codec, the result looks choppy, like the shutter speed was halved or something. The smart lossless encoding you mentioned helps a lot here.
Same as driving in the city without Waze. Replying to an email in German without Google Translate. There are a bunch of reasons, one of them is because I like it.