Not to mention perks like Jury Rigging and certain companion perks function to make repairing a little easier.
I understand why, lots of people think degrading items are annoying and I kind of agree, but the flip-side to that coin is that the game world economy has been 'balanced' (heh) around the vanilla condition and repair system. So if you do a quick search on the nexus, you'll see that there are a million flavors of repair mods.
