I couldn't help but shake my head as I read yours. I've objectively said that this doesn't stem from my personal opinion, but that of my students, as well. Which immediately invalidates your first point. I've explicitly expressed, this is not my opinion. It's that of many, many others. I certainly don't just show my students all the things to do wrong, as is the case with Blender's UI/UX.

While it may have it's own merits, none of which I've personally had the benefit of experience, I'd argue encouraging certainly some of the most counter-intuitive UI/UX behaviour from the outset is certainly a great way to isolate any initial potential users.

That's not my opinion. It's a whole ton of folks opinion who happen to disagree with you.

And yes, I love to show my students complex, yet well-laid-out software like Logic Pro X or Final Cut X, which are usable to the casual user, yet offer a profound amount of control over highly technical aspects, while retaining a simplicity, expectability, and reasonable nature of a user experience. Logic and Final Cut are what I would call 'extremely well-designed yet highly technical' pieces of software.

Blender's UI/UX is absolutely, almost inarguably from a fundamental design perspective, compared every other piece of software I use in my work flow, that is inexcusable. There's no other word for it. Any amount of forethought into it's basic UI/UX operations would result in a better piece of software.

As much as I support FOSS, I'd pay for 3DS Max or Maya in half a second, because even as convoluted as their UI/UX is - at least they actually seem to understand there's a human being who is using it at the end of the day.