catkin_make and catkin-tools (where "catkin build" comes from) both use catkin. They're just different CLI tools, and for the most part compatible, and have been fairly stable for about four years now. How many build tools have come out for JS over that period?
Workspaces are actually super useful. They're a similar idea to virtualenv and conda environments. If you don't find those useful I don't know what to tell you.
Since ROS2 is essentially a fresh restart I'm not surprised there's some churn. I think most people expect it to be fairly unstable for a while.
I've been working with ROS since nearly the beginning (as well as other middleware solutions) and I definitely see a lot of its flaws, but understand the rationale for a lot of the decisions. It's like C or C++, a 'worse-is-better' solution that's overall pretty decent, specially considering it's open source.
Workspaces are actually super useful. They're a similar idea to virtualenv and conda environments. If you don't find those useful I don't know what to tell you.
Since ROS2 is essentially a fresh restart I'm not surprised there's some churn. I think most people expect it to be fairly unstable for a while.
I've been working with ROS since nearly the beginning (as well as other middleware solutions) and I definitely see a lot of its flaws, but understand the rationale for a lot of the decisions. It's like C or C++, a 'worse-is-better' solution that's overall pretty decent, specially considering it's open source.