Agreed. Forge is the vehicle that the modding community has driven to get as far as it has. There were solutions before, such as Risugami's Mod Loader, but they were just ways of applying multiple mods at once without conflicts, not actual APIs.
Not only that, but it's my understanding that Forge makes some significant improvements and optimizations to Minecraft's code, and from status updates given in the past by Forge devs, I've seen several instances of devs not only taking their own free time to work on forge, but take time away from friends and family, and even time off work to help push Forge forwards.
Thank you forge devs, for your hard work and dedication. I'm sure you guys have received a ton of hate from impatient people who don't understand how much work something like Forge is, so thank you for sticking with it.
