I came to the conclusion that I need to learn blender as well, and spent about 2 weeks using it, but man, it is such a frustrating (yet powerful) tool, somewhat like Apples Interface Builder :)
It’s just not how I would like to work. I want more control via a super smooth interactive text-based interface; that interface should integrate seamlessly with a visual direct manipulation interface.
The interface improvements that have been made since then have been amazing for discoverability and they have kept (most of) the old keyboard shortcuts too. This is not a bad thing at all, but it does mean that there are tutorials which still make it seem like Blender requires just knowing and memorising loads of keyboard shortcuts.
When learning Blender, the space bar is definitely your friend these days.
I am pretty sure I have not learnt it deeply enough! I am also pretty sure that what I want does not exist yet, so it would not make sense to get deeper into Blender.
I used the Python API of Blender in a project with a friend of mine once to define the objects and the scene we were making and to provide parameters for the placement of said objects. It was an okay-ish but not great experience.
The API did not feel totally Pythonic, and it did not feel like it was intended for direct use. It felt more like it was meant for plumbing and plugins, not for creating and controlling a specific scene.
It’s just not how I would like to work. I want more control via a super smooth interactive text-based interface; that interface should integrate seamlessly with a visual direct manipulation interface.