The inter-connectable, nodal building block metaphor of the mat room is already a simplification of the underlying mathematics from which a shader is compiled, I guess? ;)

(although, I suppose it could also be seen as becoming a convolution of that too, in places?)

Personally, I'd say I have a reasonable grasp of it now forming, and I rather enjoy using it... especially now I have a bit more of an understanding of the roles each node plays (in representing an underlying equation or set of equations)... and especially now I have built up a pretty decent library of ready made, preset shaders, in mt5 format... mostly supplied by BB, to play around with and learn a little from.

I'm originally a visual artist... but whilst I'm not a great mathematician, I've always enjoyed maths, and been okay at it, and, well, I now work writing fairly complex computer programs for a living. so I guess I'm in the group that's predisposed to tackling the process of learning to use the node metaphor... and keen to perceive and understand what is under the hood of that.

But, I do entirely see why a new intermediate level mat room UI is so warranted... and so wanted, by probably the majority of people... and it's something I'd very much like to have to use myself... in addition to the nodes, and indeed whatever else might extend that in a still more advanced direction (per what I understand as Robynsveil's earlier posited object-oriented material language idea)... e.g. I have been enjoying playing around with BB's matmatic recently. Took me a while to work up to tackling that though...

Anyway... Poser is after all, primarily intended as a tool for visual artists, isn't it? Whether they be hobbyist or pro...

...and a big part of its market appeal is, I guess, to the hobbyist... or at least "prosumer" market demographic?

The fact that it is a fun and extensible piece of software for the more programmatically minded to hack away at (whilst a great, indeed, I'd say essential factor in it's make up) is surely best being secondary to its function as a tool for making pictures or animations using 3D assets?