I've found it rather easy to use, I've only been a mac user for a couple of years. I've not had any problems with updates either. I switched from brew fairly quickly when brew told me I couldn't install packages because they weren't "safe" even though I knew they were in fact fine because I've used them for years on linux.

If you liked bsd ports, you are probably going to like MacPorts too. I only wish they better advertise how to set up MacPorts without sudo/within users homedir. I have been using it like that for 4 years and it works great. No worries about affecting mac core bins. Highly recommend if you want to just test it out