To answer the question at the top, yes there are countless suites that are instantly resumable even after months away. I used to teach Blender (v3) and I think I could find my way around but the overhead isn’t worth it. I’m also though in a privileged position to be able to afford more, smaller commercial tools.

CAD: MoI (cool kids nowadays use Plasticity, but that is taking on similar feature creep - in any case I own and use both)

SubD modelling: nothing has ever beat Silo. And silo still gets updates, but the workflow is the same. Cheetah3D is also in the same boat.

Rendering (I do products, not character/CGI): Maverick. Fastest path tracer in the world, perpetual license, rivals Vray for product viz. if you’re currently using Keyshot - switch now.

Texturing: 3Dcoat or Marmoset Toolbag 5

What most of these have in common is either the workflow is super intuitive, or you have at least 15 years of training material readily accessible that still applies to the software today as it did back then.

Overall it’s a choice between a kitchen sink pipeline (Blender, Rhino) vs a specialised one. If I were to teach again, I would still use Blender in the classroom, and I fully support the project. My brain just works better with smaller, focussed tools.