Magento eCommerce – Bloated or Brilliant?

Magento eCommerce took the open source software world by storm when it officially launched on March 31st 2008. Many developers, including myself, jumped on board and started using it. While the feature set and branding is unquestionably great what is it actually like to work with?
Read on as we take a look at the code, architecture, complexity, hosting issues and the goals that an open source eCommerce system should strive to achieve.