Does federation have a bit of a learning curve? No doubt.
Is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.
But I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out. The front page feed and sort options are very similar to Reddit. Searching for same-instance communities is not too difficult. Posting, commenting, and voting are all quite intuitive. What’s the problem?
I’m just coming over from Reddit and finding Lemmy a little difficult, but I think it will smooth out a lot over time. Right now communities are not really established, apps are buggy and there’s a lot to get used to. More users and developers making their way to Lemmy should solve a lot of these problems