i loathe the app store to the deepest core of my being and actively resent any software I am forced to install with it.
snow leopard was a tragedy. most people I know had their machines developing weird quirks around then. supposedly osx only stays wonderful as long as you always have the latest and greatest.
i now avoid new mac releases as much as possible. last time it was xcode that forced me to upgrade. That is just the most ridiculously large installer for gcc ever.
Oh god yes, and even if you go 'theres cli-tools' (behind a registration wall that you have to know specifically to look for) ... last month, apple decided to booby-trap their gcc binary to force you to open up xcode and agree to a new license agreement before you were allowed to compile things on the command line.
if you didnt have xcode, you had to download it, to open it up, agree to the compulsory license agreement to unlock your cli binaries.