The "the code was ugly" thing is an often repeated statement but doesn't really reflect the reality of what was released.

The source code is very tightly integrated, but it avoids many of the common issues you would see in software of its type (ie, the wire protocol had no variable length strings whatsoever), and it implements a crazy amount of different features in a concise, readable code base. You can look over the original Bitcoin source code and immediately get an answer for how something functions, which is entirely the goal for what was effectively a prototype that introduced new key concepts to anybody who picked it up. wxBitcoin compiled happy on linux with only minor modifications, and OSX not a whole lot of time afterwards.

If the author had gone for absolute perfection or many levels of abstraction it never would have been released; what was created was nothing short of astounding, and being functional while creating something so absolutely novel is great code.