I would not discount the value of nurbs so readily.

If properly implemented and maintained, which unfortunately they are not in Maya, they can be a very powerful tool. Especially for hard surface modeling. There is a very good reason why nurbs are used as the primary and in most cases only method to describe surfaces in automotive, aircraft, mechanical, and industrial design software and it is not simply because they are light weight. The precision and control one has using nurbs to build accurate complex compound surfaces far exceeds anything one could possible hope to achieve using polygons and a purely polygon modeling workflow.

There are complex surface shapes that would almost be impossible to model accurately without nurbs curves and surfaces. Other packages have splines and spline patches and nurms and in the case of 3ds max and modo and c4d and lightwave they are being not only maintained but enhanced because these companies have the foresightedness to realize their value.

For Autodesk and alias before them to ignore nurbs curves and surfaces for the last ten years is in my opinion is a major mistake and is very short sited. Were they to drop nurbs support entirely that would be the last straw for me and I would certainly switch to another modeling application.