I agree with you - for tools I use on a daily basis.

However, since my interests vary considerably, and therefore I dabble with lots of different tools, the difficult-to-learn tools never get enough traction in my limited human memory to get me to the easy-to-use stage.

If a community doesn't want to engage occasional users, it's probably fine (maybe even desirable) to have a higher barrier to entry to make daily use really fast.

If a community benefits meaningfully from occasional users, a high learning barrier may not be a good thing.