Finder is indeed frustrating. "Recent" seems like an attempt to fix this without the need to use some giant camera roll?

The (hard) problem is that almost every finder alternative/add-on I've tried is someone else's ideal workflow that still doesn't sit well with me. I find KDE's Dolphin similarly frustrating - for very similar reasons.

Both work marginally better (for me) when used in concert with the quick-find tools like Alfred (or Spotlight) and KRunner. None of these are perfect.

Showerthought: maybe the "find files" interfaces aren't the worst offenders; maybe it's the "place files" workflows that are problematic and we're trying to solve the wrong problem?