Exactly, I started on Alloy and quickly found that there was too much magic in going from templates to js code.

Once I took a step back to Titanium it all felt a lot more sane. Yes it is a little more verbose, but at least I can follow the data flow in code.

Appcelerator is going through some changes as of this week[1] which I hope will improve the documentation and ecosystem around the product.

[1] - http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/04/appcelerator-slashes-staff/

Also, their by far best evangelist, Kevin Whinnery, left for Twilio a year or two ago.