[dekhn]

There's a big dynamic range in pine. For example, I work with everything from big-box-store lowest-cost pine lumber (2x4s) to kiln-dried select pine.

The low quality stuff is full of knots, warped (with very high variable humidity- some beams weigh 2x other beams). The high quality stuff is.... not as nice as maple, but certainly it's dense, uniform, and doesn't warp. From what I can tell, it's because they select the high quality stuff, then kiln-dry it and mill it.

Also if you inspect cheap 2x4s, there are often some higher quality pieces (few knots, straight-ish, not too wet) which you can then trim and plane to get decent wood.

But yeah, pine is sort of an industrial product grown fast at scale.