"Ethereum has always marketed itself as a complete working solution, which it is obviously not." Really? I recall them having 3-4 stages before they called it done, the first of which called itself "frontier" precisely to discourage folks from thinking it was ready.
That said, I was somewhat horrified to see something as large as the DAO launch on an alpha platform, and not surprised to see it tank. Maybe Ethereum core developers in unofficial channels were more cavalier about its current state, but as a casual follower who read their blog for a while, I never got the impression presented in your comment.