One thing that I have noticed is that the newest versions of poser allow you to do more with less 'node spaghetti'.  If you look at the BB glossy shader and compare it to the PP2012 BB glossy that BB posted(I think in an RDNA thread) you will notice how much simpler it is.  That is a result of the addition of new nodes that contain the equations that BB had to create in earlier versions of Poser.  I'm thinking of the fresnel effect in this one that used to be several nodes and now is contained in one.  So in that way poser is becoming more and more geared twoards us average folks.   But by the same token they are also adding new toys for BB to squeeze the most out of by coming up with big fancy complex shaders for us to puzzle over.

I for one am happy to use anything they feel like throwing in there and I just have to hope people will help me when I use it wrong.

Quote - I also get very frustrated with the material room.  While it is true that I haven't studied it near enough, whenever I see some of these shaders with 15 to 30 plus node attachments, I'm thinking how in the heck does anyone ever figure this out.  It is nothing short of amazing to me how BB and others make sense of this all, but I sure wish it was more geared toward average blokes like me.