Time and Time again the same question.

Allot of times I have the programmers saying that Sharepoint development is easy but they end up  using .Net with asp.net controls and using AAPI object model . They get frustrated that things dont work and they say why should i use sharepoint then when i was better off using Asp.net / sql server .... I do feel Sharepoint is only easy for power users but not true development platform .... am i missing the plot somewhere.
I see developers get extremly frustrated / miles and miles of XML / Very slow development results.  I am missing the plot somewhere but cant seem to pin point something .. can you guys explain ?

Cheers