I dunno man, I know BI pretty well, but the truth is that it’s just fun to work with nodes. Like, what happens when you stick value a into shader b type of fun. And once you’ve had your fun, you have a lot of cool shaders to use.
And in general, while you can make an argument that other renderers have simpler settings, Blender makes it quite easy to append materials, which really rewards you having your fun with the node system.
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Really disagree @patricks. Nodes are the building blocks which let you build basically anything. What Cycles lacks imho is a good set of presets, pre-made (nodes) materials for quick and easy reuse which could cover most common shading situations, but many times you need more flexibility to make your own custom stuff.
What about shading languages like OSL then, for even deeper customization? Even nodes aren’t enough sometimes for certain projects.
Well, that’s a good reason why BI is default. You switch to cycles at your own pace… whenever you’re ready
and if the going gets tough, you can always fall back to good old default BI 
By the way, i strongly disagree with you on BI being dumb 
it has a few dents here and there, but in my opinion, it gives better control and artistic freedom.
cycles on the other hand is like a big “physics” simulator, you throw in the ingredients and just watch helplessly as it flexes its muscles in an attempt to give you “physically-correct” results… with little regards to art
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You seem to think you know better than the people who actually create rendering software and the Hollywood artists who use them, so there’s not much more point in arguing here…
Pretty positive the point of all render engines is to simulate light… if you cant make artistic use of cycles that sounds like a personal problem
The node system is obviously more flexible and works as a coherent whole. I’ve got some node materials in BI, in fact; which is what I work in. I’d like to use Cycles, but it’s just too slow. Since I’m specifically not trying to get a photo-realistic output, BI makes more sense for me. I fear it will be dropped by the devs at some point, which would be a pity (for me personally). Cycles obviously can produce some great results, but without cutting edge hardware and a render farm, I can’t contemplate using it.
Back on topic, I don’t think the nodes are that difficult, but people react differently to interfaces and methodologies. Some years ago I was working as a building services engineer, and one of the systems we had was a very similar nodes interface in which you could connect virtual sensors, controllers, modifiers etc to outputs to change the configuration of the air conditioning unit. I took to it like a duck to water, but none of my colleagues could understand it at all, despite me showing them several times- you select this node, draw a line to that node, and so on. It very much depends on the ability to construct a mental model of the system you’re trying to create. In that case for instance it might be, “I want the sensor to open the valve 25% at 20C, and 75% at 25C, what set of virtual controllers do I need to get that output?”. If you can do that, it’s easy. If not, this kind of interface is baffling.
If BI is dropped, it will happen after we have a real-time solution that’s substantially better looking than BI anyway. Renders coming out of UE4, CryEngine, Fox Engine, etc. these days make BI look positively ancient, in terms of both feature set and render times.
I doubt BI is going anywhere any time soon though. It’s so deeply rooted in Blender’s code that it will take a massive rewrite of Blender as a whole to get rid of it.
There is a way in workflow that makes using either render engine a bit easier, if not obvious at first.
Specifically, use nodes material mode in BI. However, put the entire BI node group in it’s own frame to make it obviously separate as it’s not compatible with the Cycles Nodes.
So you should have a big cluster of Cycles nodes with it’s material output, and a much smaller group of BI nodes boxed away in a frame with it’s own different material output. I usually put the frame of BI nodes somewhere above the other stuff since it’s node group is typically smaller, and layering new nodes in a Cycles material build is biased downwards because that’s where the open sockets are. (You want the free open space to be below.)
As both node groups are visible and occupy the same space for a material in the node editor regardless of what render engine is being used, some aspects can be copy-pasted over between both node sets. (Not all, but color and certain values can. Unfortunately, procedural textures are one of the things you can’t.) Then keep in mind there are things different enough where you have to know what would carry over, so a color in the BI specular slot would likely copy over to the glossy input on a mix in Cycles, etc.
Not exactly a perfect solution. (Easy enough to screw up if you don’t keep tabs on what’s what.) However if well organized, it does make it a lot easier to keep consistency across the different render engines.
I like the BI renderer when I’m just slapping something together, it seems quicker and easier. But I love them nodes when using Cycles, it seems I can play with the look more completely.
What if there was a material shader (green node) that had all the BI settings ?
Although i am not a fan of BI, i prefer cycles, i can imagine such node would make it easier for some people.
And it might also be handy for converting in between BI and Cycle render modes
Most of the features of BI should happen and be compatible in newer OGL versions.
So, be ready for this. A BI like render in real time.
BI is very old, cycles is made for deferent tasks.
It may take some time, however things have to go this way.
There’s nothing really to prevent making your own. It’s just not as pretty looking without categories. Check out my Ubershader for an example.
…but BI is a dumb renderer
If you do not understand how BI works, your dumbass is more and large
BI is very old
Cycles - is realy dumbass renderer for dumbass new users. BI may will work as Cycles, but not develop…
… not develop, because is difficult for developers (afraid to break)