Everyone who begins to use it quits saying that it is the biggest hurdle.

It's really not. The main problem with FreeCAD is the topological naming problem (available in a fork) and the lack of assembly support in the core (available as add on). Those make it a pain to build anything more complex and they make refactoring a nightmare. Following that you also have the problem that the geometry code is not very capable and the software will just refuse to perform some actions that would results in multiple bodies.

That's not to say that the GUI isn't in need of polish. Back in 0.19 it had obvious issues like conflicting keyboard shortcuts between modes and without a tutorial you might have a very hard time finding the window that even allows you to build stuff. So there is plenty of room for improvement, but one shouldn't be under the illusion that there is some professional CAD solution hiding under a bad UI. It's would still be a very basic CAD tool even with a highly polished UI.

But as they say, every journey starts with a first step. It's certainly a project that has plenty of UI issues and could benefit from improvements.