Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never really thought the barrier to entry for blender was that high. I tinkered in the blender codebase for a while and the code isn't that hard to understand. They've since made huge strides in code organization so it's even easier. Blender was my first real introduction to hacking on C code and I found the dev community very helpful and accommodating.
From a user perspective, Blender seems to have cleaner code behind it than most of the commercial 3D apps; it starts faster, it crashes less, and I haven't encountered bugs in functionality. As for the interface - I find it dire for detailed editing tasks(I opt to use Wings for modelling) but not too bad for managing the overall scene, applying materials, lighting, compositing, etc. I speak as someone who's invested…
(But Wings is still a better modeller.)