Maybe you're biased by children's ease of learning - neural plasticity?

No. C4D was magic and very intuitive. The UI was very good and made it easy to safely explore without causing damage.

I don't remember the last time I used a software package as smooth and clean and tidy as C4D.

I started with blender and then tried C4D. Never got the hang of it. Familiarity is really a strong factor.

You probably used the newer UI which is almost nothing like the old, pre-Blender UI. The newer UI sucks.