> Is it artistic statement, or laziness? Or something else? Software, like all interactive mediums, has a functional component that you can't just ignore.

Of course it can be ignored. Given the depth of the feature list (see the original link), and the vagueness of the items on it, it's not surprising that they haven't gone through and come up with a comprehensive and perfect UI before anything else has actually been implemented.

Instead the UI grows to accommodate the features as they are added, like every other program in existence.