Jim in Burlington ON
I have a few newer planes from Steve Knight and some that are from the 1800-1930's. You can certainly hog off more material with a wooden jointer. It seems to provide more feedback than a metal plane. To say that one or the other requires more skill or experience would be false. Sharpening has more to do with performance than any other factor. Personally I put the blade in while the wooden plane is flat on the bench then the wedge. Give one very light tap on the wedge and then plane away adjusting it as you go. Metal planes require some serious tuming to get great performance but can be tuned finer performance but this takes a bucket load of time and patience with the frog and sole. Metal block planes are far superior to a couple of woooden one's I have used. Infil planes are also a bunch of fun for final smoothing.