I started with Drupal around the time version 4.7 came out, and I always thought that the project would have done better for itself by focusing more on its potential as a framework rather than a CMS.

Drupal has always seemed to have something of an identity crises. Some people think of it as a fully-featured CMS, some think of it as a framework or platform, and then you have a ton of people just trying to use it as a more flexible blog.

I think that when the community exploded in size, it had only really begun to wrestle with the identity question. The lack of some definite focus as Drupal's popularity expanded probably contributed to the current situation.

Frankly, I think that the majority of the current problems would be solved by trimming all of the fat from the core. That would allow the core developers to focus on making the core fast, stable, and flexible. Let the wider community maintain and provide any extra functionality.