My main gripe with anything from that group of people is that they refuse to play nice with others, and by extension that their code refuses to work properly with code produced by others.
[1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox#Multimedia_play...
Pulseaudio is in the same park as SystemD today. It works as long as you don't demand too much of it and don't stray from whatever they deem to be The True Path. It is better for your simple needs. Believe me, those who have advanced professional needs don't think highly of it.
The support for this systems come from people that just use it as packaged and don't have specific needs. Which would be fine IF they weren't getting in the way when you really have specifics needs.
Even if some of the concepts are sound, execution is terrible. As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Pulseaudio is definitely better at what it does than ALSA, it is not a step backwards.