I wonder why that’s the case. Personally, I enjoy using it, and it’s not really a pain to work with.
I think I only have 2 complaints:
1: I think too many organizations buy into "it’s got SQL! line. It does, and even though it has SQL, you have to think differently about how your documents are structured. It’s like trying to think in 3D but still using a 2D mentality.
2: I wish you didn’t need to explicitly have indexes for EVERYTHING in production. I get why it’s needed, but it makes trying to do ad hoc queries a serious pain.
But past that, it’s a perfectly fine database to work with. I don’t see why it’s so dreaded.