QGIS is incredible. I have two geography degrees and all they taught us was ESRI stuff. One class with GRASS and QGIS, 7 years of ArcGIS. Only when I graduated and no longer had access to their insanely expensive licenses that I rediscovered QGIS. Because it's not the smoothest ux, it really pushed me towards the programmatic API. As a result I became a better GIS expert than I ever would have. I do robotics + GIS these days and QGIS is front and centre in my toolbox.