Whilst I'm inordinately fond of Blender, I'm quite aware of its limitations. And there's a fair-few. They are getting around to fixing/improving them, so stick around: it's getting better -- incredibly so! -- with each release. Have you tried the loop-select thing yet? [ALT] [LEFT-CLICK] - well, that's how I have mine set up... I could never get my head around that "right-click to select" nonsense where the rest of the world selects with left-click - and you can select an entire edge-loop. And incremental-add... you have an edge-loop selected, then press [CTRL] [+] ( that's the + on the numeric keypad) and it will add edge-loops for you.

ETA: this works for vertex mode, edge-mode or face mode... and btw, you can toggle between those modes with [CTRL] [TAB]....

Cool!  Yes, I'm VERY impressed with the way Blender selects edge loops.  It's very convenient and fast!  Probably the fastest edge loop selections I've ever had in any software, so that's a huge plus for me, because I do a lot of edge-extrude modelling, as opposed to box modelling, or other techniques.  The way you can switch from selecting full loops, to partial loops, and rings in both edge and face mode, is absolutely the best such feature I've used in any package, including 3dsmax, Maya and Modo!  They did a brilliant job working out the hotkey combo for accessing edge and face loops in Blender.

As for the left-click bullcrap, I agree with you.  It's total nonsense, and I don't know why they developed it like that!  It serves only to confuse newcomers immediately, and causes less interest in the software.  I have personally not changed the left/right click default option while learning the software though, because most of the tutorials I follow use the default settings, and it's hard enough to remember what I'm doing, without having to remember to reverse the button configuration.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.