Now I’ve been learning the in’s and out of maya and come to like many things about the program, but their are weirdness packed into these programs which leads you to learn forward to others. Such as doing animation in Maya the key frames seem to go into space. And 3ds max is so cluttered to which it makes it seems like a sloppy workflow leading to slowed productivity. I ahve yet to try cinema 4d but i like some serious opinions… anybody?
I started with Cinema4D long time ago, it was quite good and easy to learn but lacked quite a few things from 3dsMax.
To me 3dsmax has a more cleaner UI compared to maya.
In 3ds max i have to max the item, then goto modifier, then goto ribbon, then convert to poly… all in a semi backwards interface. Maya animation keys go into space sometimes… I can simply look up a fix but why bother. As i see they have so many programs that make you go one into another.
Wow… Lol As i look back on my post and the more professional I become 3ds Max is THE Goto Place!!!
I used to model on 3DS Max for some time when was needed, but after that I forgot everything because I never used it again by my own.
I started on Maya PLE in 2001, everything outside Maya’s way of doing things is alien to me; I took a look at blender, C4D, Modo… meh I like Maya and that’s all 
I’m all new to this 3d modeling, I have c4d here(which i know only the very basic).
Dont know about the others.
This is so so relative to the individual and his needs… Discussions like this are literally pointless each and every time. I wont even go into pro or con on one specific package.
If you want to check out what a software can or cant do, check out developer reels.