I appreciate the perspective @igoris. I used commercial apps through college and studio jobs for several years. I was a hardcore commercial app believe till I put Blender to the test. Trust me that pro artists constantly complain about commercial app development too; bugs not being fixed for years, strange UX choices, late feature additions, etc.
But if you can afford it, certainly give Maya or 3Ds Max a try. They all suffer from similar developmental issues in my experience, like the ones you described. I think this has way more to do with the inherent complexity of computer animation more than each app’s respective development teams.
