I think "non trivial" and "slowly going insane" parts only happen if you don't have right tools, or not using POSIX-compatable system.
In python you have "shlex.quote" and "shlex.join". In bash, you have "${env@Q}". I've found those to work wonderfully to me - and I did crazy things like quote arguments, embed into shell script, quote script again for ssh, and quote 3rd time to produce executable .sh file.
In other languages.. yeah, you are going to have bad time. Especially on Windows, where I'd just give up and move to WSL.
To be honest, I've never heard of Bash's @Q solution before today--I can't find it in https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/, which is my usual goto guide for "how do I do $ADVANCED_FEATURE in bash?"
To be fair that's missing a lot. I'm not sure how much is just showing its age and how much it never had. The actual bash manual is quite informative.
In particular, failure to mention `printf -v` is horrible. Not only is it better performing than creating a whole process for command substitution, it also avoids the nasty newline problem.
`printf -v` was added in Bash 3.1 (2005). I think revisions of ABS predates that; but ABS has certainly been updated since then (last in 2014), and has no excuse for not including it.