Re-reading my post, it does come off as a rant, that is not how it is intended....
I just believe that the "core" should be just that, the minimum code required to participate in and contribute to the network.
I think the planned direction to split out the wallet is great, and appreciate you taking it.
It would be interesting if the authors of other* (SPV) wallets made it possible to run and manage a walletless bitcoind in the background, so that their users can optionally contribute to the network by running a full node.
*Armory does this, but only because it needs to, it cannot work in SPV mode