Yeeesh...I consider myself experienced with data but that console confused me greatly...I imagine it doesn't do well with less ideal datasets. I think Tableau is probably the more appropriate, general purpose data exploration tool...and I say that as someone who doesn't really know how to use Tableau (I'd say Tableau is the first piece of software that I've decided that I'm not patient/smart enough to learn).
I think it's about as difficult as it needs to be...in that it purports to be an interactive visualization builder that also serves as a self-hosted visualization player, as well as a kind of database/spreadsheet hybrid (or at least, a hookup between those kinds of things)...for non-technical users who need all of those things, all at once...Tableau is probably the best solution. But I usually only need one of those things at a time...or, that's how I approach my data problems: work with it in SQL/Excel and export into a portable format (i.e. JSOn or CSV) that a data visualization tool can make do with, whether that data viz tool is just, well, Excel, or ggplot2, or D3, if I need a web interactive. And I know how to upload/host my own web content.
So Tableau is difficult because it's an all-in-one package with a lot of moving parts...and I rarely need all of those moving parts. While I don't use Tableau myself, I know many people who do, and generally they use it because they don't know how to do web things, period...i.e. Tableau's web charts "just work", once you learn how to build them.
Of course, "just works" is a moving target in this day of responsive web and AMP and non-Web platforms (i.e. Facebook Instant Articles)...media publications that produce Tableau viz are going to have to find a workaround, or hope that Tableau continues to innovate in making their viz packages portable.
