As a total outsider to all this, I suspect you are right.
Bitcoin is very hacky, as almost all successful first systems are. Etherium is a second system.
First systems: By force of will you cobble together a viable prototype and if you are lucky it gets traction. Then it's an exercise in patching to keep the system running.
Second systems: longer dev cycles based on lofty goals for better architecture and features. Many second systems fail here. But if/when the second system gains traction, it's potentially a much better solution since it could learn from mistakes of the first system.
It's clear that the tools are better in Etherium for building block chain apps. It also looks like it's getting good adoption.
Like all things crypto currency it's interesting that there is money on the line. Bitcoin won't fall out of fashion as quickly as other systems for that reason.
I have previously answered a few use cases here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10846788]
I did it in one week, it uses Oraclize.it (which I believe is also available for bitcoin, so that's nice), and I am sure it can be built on bitcoin too, but the biggest problem remains this:
* While doing development in Solidity, and using HTML/CSS/JS for client, I am able to rapidly build a dapp.
* Writing the code in a higher level programming language created for the purpose of blockchain apps, allow me to think at a higher level abstraction.
* Training people to write in Solidity is far easier than training them to write in C/C++.
* Faster and rapid dapp development(RDD) will unlease a new age in blockchain innovation, and if you have been in tech for a while, you know that 'crack up boom' of innovation we see when Rapid application development became possible.
Case in point, Augur. Paul Sztorc has been doing development of Truthcoin for far longer than Augur people and even has funding from Roger Ver, but Augur has managed to rally a lot more people around it by delivering working prototype sooner than later, and now they're already in Beta, targetting 2016 election.
Look, I love bitcoin and I was one of the earliest adopters of bitcoin (2009 Dec era). But I have been a software developer for far longer than that, and I can tell you, bitcoin's code is not made to make the things we desire to make now.
BTW, here is an argument against Ethereum. Any app built on it, will be inherently slow because of the price they'll pay for building it in a higher level abstraction platform. This means, that Augur will eventually hit performance wall, at which point, every successful Ethereum app will have to be developed in C/C++ and natively to get more performance.
Even though ethereum's 15 sec blocks are nowhere near as secure as Bitcoins 10 minute blocks, the fact that you can 4 blocks after a minute already gives pretty decent doublespend security, from a statistical standpoint.
Why didn't these companies develop their products on Bitcoin? Are they incapable of due diligence in this space?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/ethereum-blockchain-a...
The news for ethereum is positive enough right now, no need to exaggerate the facts.
I'm just trying to counter the idea that the excitement around ethereum is somehow manufactured by 'clever marketing'.
But oh ya we are all suppose to believe BTC can do all of this but apparently nobody really knows how. It's really just a bunch of people that think BTC is special because it was first, but it lost it's first mover advantage.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/43fm3w/the_core_...
http://dapps.ethercasts.com/