I have continued to use 3-button Logitech mice many years after they were no longer manufactured, because, especially in EDA/CAD programs, I valued the ability of making gestures with the middle button as far more useful than a scroll wheel.
Later, I have used various mice and also other alternative pointing devices, e.g. trackballs, track points and touch pads, but in the last few years I have settled on using a small Wacom Intuos tablet and stylus as the pointing device, instead of a mouse, with the tablet configured in its "Relative" mode, not in its default "Absolute" mode. In the "Relative" mode, the stylus behaves exactly like a mouse.
In my opinion, a good stylus is much better than any mouse. It is much more comfortable, due to the natural position of the hand. It is much faster, because it is extremely light and it does not touch the tablet. A minute movement of the hand would move the cursor instantaneously from one corner to another. It is more accurate than any mouse, as you can easily draw or write freehand with it. Because the stylus is very light, I can keep it between the fingers when typing on the keyboard (while touch typing with all fingers), so unless I want to type a long text, when I drop the stylus on the tablet, the transitions of the right hand between keyboard and pointing device are much faster than with a mouse.
The Wacom stylus has 3 buttons (one being the tip of the stylus). They can be programmed for any function. I prefer the tip to be left click, the next button as the right click and the last button as the double left click. The functions can be changed at any moment, so if you want within a program to have one button as middle click, you can do that instantaneously. There are a few buttons on the tablet (which has the same size as a mouse pad), so you could also put middle click or any other function there.