I agree, if Arduino hired a few more software developers and concentrated on fully supporting the boards they have it would be a lot more fun for us Makers.
Probably not as advanced as the work you are doing, but here is my DAC to ADC example here. It took me a while to figure out what was going on and that the Aref pin was important. Haven't tried the example since a few MBED core releases so not even sure if it still works.