Regarding hotkeys, there were some major changes for 2.5 along with other UI changes, but after that the default have barely changed, just additions and minor changes when the underlying features change.
Making hotkeys remappable was in no way a solution to that "problem", it's a standard feature in other 3D software that a lot of users requested, especially those who wanted to make the hotkeys compatible with Maya and 3ds Max.
I'm pretty pragmatic about tools, everybody has a preference and outside of pipeline integration issues it's the speed and quality of the output that matters.
For me, what's given blender the edge over the commercial software I've used (mostly Maya) is the keyboard-driven approach:
I can rotate a cube 22 degrees in the x axis, scale it 15% and move it 3 units in the z axis in about 5 seconds without every reaching for the mouse. That's tremendously powerful and fast, and requires that I know only about 4 keyboard shortcuts.
It's a bit of a learning curve (no moreso than learning, say a new programming syntax), but when you catch on, the speed and efficiency pays for itself in short order.
Here's an (out of date) overview of the hotkeys:[1] Some of the hotkeys change in each new release. In typical open source fashion, the "solution" to that mess was to make the several hundred hotkeys remappable: "Important note: the ever changing nature of Blender's development means features can be arbitrarily updated so shortcut keys may be mapped to different functions or be in different locations version to version - this is especially true of Blender 2.50 up to and included the latest versions."
If you like EMACS, you might like Blender.
From a developer perspective, the Blender game engine is interesting. An idea that keeps coming back is that programming should be done by wiring little boxes together in a GUI. The Blender game engine does that. This leads to giant, messy wiring diagrams.
[1] http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/useful-keyboard-sh...