> To support those needs, there were clutches like Intel’s PAE, which allowed manipulating up to 64GB of RAM on 32-bit machines without changing the programming model, but they were just that: hacks.

You can go look up how the 32-bit protected mode got hacked on top of the 16-big segmented virtual memory that the 286 introduced. The Global Descriptor Table is still with us on 64-bit long mode.

So, its not PAE that is particularly hacky, its a more broader thing with x86.