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I don't think that there is any particular problem in the code base. Its design, however, has been made with 1970s constraints in mind.

A lot of people have thought about rewriting (parts) of TeX, but the amount of legacy is so high and you have to keep compatibility with lots of existing user code.

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So you don't think there is a problem in the code base, but you say: " legacy code is so high and you have to keep compatibility with lots of existing user code". That's a contradiction.

I mean that the code works perfectly in the sense that the behaviour conforms to the specification, but it is hard to modify it. So, there's a problem with the code base, just one that is not visible if you don't want to extend the program (one can argue that it's the worst kind of problem).

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