Professional tools are often made for the efficiency of a professional user and are hard to grok at first glance. Other examples from the parent, like DAWs, suffer from this and Blender is no exception. By all accounts it used to be a lot worse.

It is geared towards keyboard use, but I agree, the UI is not structured very well - too much mystery meat!

Sometimes I watch HOWTOs with Blender and it says stuff like "Hit NumPad +" and it makes me think, damn they going to tell me to start using the META key next?

I think intuitiveness and density are orthogonal properties (although often both desirable).

Regarding Blender specifically:

Do you have a background in 3D modeling?

I am genuinely curious.

I don't come from an digital art background and I bounced off Blenders UI several times but after doing a tutorial or two now I find I can use it for simple things. I have always wondered how much it was 3D modeling in general vs. Blender specifically.

In a similar case I have used both Inkscape and Illustrator as an amateur and, much as I love open source, there is no comparison. Illustrator was significantly easier to use and worked better.

I definitely get that. When I did 3D modeling, my start in Blender was very rough. After I got used to it and did some tutorials it got much easier to navigate. That was probably a decade ago, so I’m sure it’s only gotten more complex since