I don't know. I think some things can legitimately take some people ten years to learn, even if they are doing it right. However, my disagreement is that sometimes learning something at a cursory level, even if it doesn't allow you to do quality work, can be worthwhile. It can give you insight and appreciation of the discipline and help you work more effectively with the people that really do it. It can also be fun and make people feel proud to just be able to do it a little.

2-5 years with 3ds should definitely put you in the "decent" category.

There is a big difference between being "decent" at something and truly knowing it as "an extension of self". Expertise is a real thing.

If you find the 10 year rule absurd, take a look at this paper: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

Just a quick datapoint. I've used 3dsmax casually (free, academic version), and I managed to produce some images of which I was quite proud. They weren't magnificently detailed scenes, but they were photorealistic representations of the objects I was modeling. So no, it definitely doesn't take 10 years to get to the point where you can make something meaningful in 3dsmax.

It does, however, take grit, because there's a ton of documentation to read, particularly concerning rendering settings.