Patching is by far the most tedious and difficult part of NURBS modelling. I like to compare it to math, you might stumped, frustrated and all at an equation, but when you finally solve it, you get to feel good.

I believe NURBS curves are a part of CG every modeller should learn, regardless of how much he intends to use them anyway, since they keep being pretty much a standard in the VFX industry, although being slowly replaced by SUBD workflow.

Also, if your thing is product design, then you´re going to keep on modelling with NURBS since these curves -and surfaces- are used for CAD and CAM applications anyway.