This is nothing new. My mouse and keyboard have been nearly impossible to use too. What dumb ass decided that the enter key should be on the right? Microsoft did us all a favor by adding the windows keys on both sides...

No kidding - it just plain will not be useable data. Gotta learn somehow :)

Most of the arguments I see about Drupal are something like "I'm an ordinary Joe, and I couldn't make whitehouse.gov". So what? If you know nothing about a complex system, how can you expect to succeed with it immediately? If PBX systems were as popular as CMS systems, everyone would be running around saying "I tried Asterisk for my home phone and I couldn't figure it out, and therefore it sucks". Unfortunately Drupal is in a market where everyone is interested in using it, but not everyone has the skills to use it, or the patience to learn it. If you want easy out of the box, and don't have money to hire someone, use Wordpress... Meanwhile, Drupal is carving out a deep niche of consultants like myself that CAN and DO make it work.

I'm a Drupal consultant, and I wish you would have called me or one of my colleagues. I would agree that if you attempted to scale Drupal to a moderate to large size with no prior experience, you will probably fall on your face. Drupal has evolved into something that works quite well for small sites on shared hosting. It does work for large sites, but it's not easy. There are dozens of optimizations that you didn't mention trying. It's not a piece of shit. You just failed to make it work. :)

I would argue that it only requires hacks if you wish to make it unique, or do something not provided by available modules. I've worked with Drupal for over 3 years and it rarely requires "hacks" once you know your way around. Sharepoint on the other hand is a proprietary and commercial rabbit hole that will cost you some serious bucks once you need to customize it.