That's the classic tradeoff with any framework, not just Catalyst. It requires more time to get started with it and it may not be structured the way you would have designed it. The payoff comes if you are making lots of similar things, since making the second and third one should be much quicker.

And I would add the point that you shouldn't get sucked into playing the software-of-the-month game. If you've got a way of doing something that works, then what you have is something that works... don't throw it away just so you can say you're using the latest and greatest.

The odds are good that once you get used to using Catalyst the buzz is going to have moved on to yet another package...