CUDA is the default tech for GPGPU in HPC or AI applications, for more than a decade now. By now, people have found most of these driver bugs, and nVidia has fixed them.
Similarly, compute shaders is the only tech for GPGPU used in videogames. Modern videogames are using compute shaders for a decade now, in increasing volumes. For example, UE5 even renders triangle meshes with them [1].
However, OpenCL and ROCm are niche technologies. I’ve been hearing complaints about driver quality for some time now. For obvious reason, AMD and Intel prioritize driver bugs which affect modern videogames sold in many million copies, compared to the bugs which only affect a few people working on HPC, AI or other niche GPGPU applications.
> they're underestimating the power of a few good public "how to use the damn thing" sessions
I agree the learning curve is steep, with the lack of good materials. For an introduction article, see [2]. Ignore the parts about D3D10 hardware, the article is old and D3D10 hardware is no longer relevant. Another one, with slightly more depth, is [3]. For an example how to multiply large dense matrices with a compute shader see [4], but that example is rather advanced because optimizations, and because weird memory layout conventions inherited from the upstream project.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMorJX3Nj6U
[2] https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/DevZone/docs/h...
[3] https://github.com/jstoecker/dxcompute-docs/tree/main
[4] https://github.com/Const-me/Whisper/blob/master/ComputeShade...
