The wiki is much better if you just want to get stuff working. The book is more for background.
The big issue is they don't seem to treat the documentation and client libraries as a really big deal. Look at a language like Python - it's nothing special, but it's great tutorial and documentation gets it a lot of mindshare. Heck, look at Ruby - it's Python with a bit of syntactic sugar, less libraries, and a slow interpreter. But its documentation (which is great, but offbeat) wins it rabid fans like DHH, who go on to make stuff like Rails, and it's practically a household name.
There's some really neat stuff that only CoucbDB can do, but figuring out how to use it is just a pain.
Interesting I had quite the opposite experience. It found it quite a bit better than any other NoSQL database UIs. Someone even copied it for MongoDB and stuck it on top of it.
Why do you think it was pain? And what NoSQL DB UIs have you found to be better and why?
When trying to enter a view, you need to quote and escape your code and put it all on one line. It's really bad, no novice would even know how to do this properly. I had to write my own little slash/escape tool to do it right.
Maybe a plugin interface for other syntax parsers, since, for example we use a python view server instead of a JS one.
I am still wondering what NoSQL databases have a better admin UI. I feel that Futon is pretty good and was a factor in picking CouchDB over others.
Once you've clicked into a database in Futon, choose a view to inspect/edit using the dropdown in the upper-right. Couldn't be easier, really.