Comment 8 for bug 184550

i see what you mean - it cam indeed create that many nodes if you draw very very slowly. but that's not typical use of the tool - most users draw much faster, and the tool is optimized for that. also i tried reducing inkscape prefs > misc > simplification threshold to 0.005 and simplifying a long stroke with 1000 nodes, and it reduced nodes a lot almost without changing the shape. so you don't have to use illustrator for that at all.

note that simplification can accelerate as described here:

http://inkscape.org/doc/advanced/tutorial-advanced.html

so even with a low threshold you can get strong simplification by hitting ctrl+l repeatedly, if you need it.