You say that as if its a bad thing, smali is a pleasure to read/reverse compared to a lot of other "assembly".
On top of that, using this approach you can edit and rebuild the apk. jd-gui and company are nice, but often times I prefer to just skip ahead to the smali and really know whats going on.
Totally agree with everything you just said! I'm not down on Smali; obviously its incredibly powerful because you can tweak and baksmali. I just personally have no need to modify and rebuild Dalvik.
On top of that, using this approach you can edit and rebuild the apk. jd-gui and company are nice, but often times I prefer to just skip ahead to the smali and really know whats going on.