There's a "Show Path Bar" setting accessible from the View menu in Finder. You can see the file's path right from the Get Info menu and drag and drop it into a terminal or whatever and have the path immediately available. You can copy a file's path by holding the option key with the right click menu is open.
It's pretty accessible. Most of the complaints I see regarding Finder seem to be a result of trying to use a Mac in the same way as another OS. It's different, but takes just a quick search to find all the shortcuts and stuff and it's very simple.
These are great Finder tips, but they all involve the mouse, which I find mildly infuriating.
Command-Option-C: copy the full path of the selected file or folder as plaintext, with space characters not escaped with backslashes.
Command-C, then Command-V into a terminal prompt: paste the full path of the copied file or folder, with space characters backslash-escaped. Tested in Terminal and iTerm2.
In file dialogs, like saving a file, you can start typing a path and it will pop up. You can also drag and drop a folder into the save dialog to save it there.
You can see your current path on the bottom of the window if you enable it in the options of Finder. But you can just click it, you can't actually edit it and hit enter to go to a different path. We simply don't have the technology yet ;)
You can make finder show the current path (including file path) with Cmd+Option+P. You can manipulate the path with Cmd+Shift+G. These options are also right there in the menus.
Cmd+Shift+G does not seem to default to the current location. Over here, I just tried it and got ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData. I haven't been there in months. So it's a significant step down from hitting Cmd+L in a browser.
The actual keyboard shortcut, if you'd like to reproduce the behavior you get with Cmd+L in a browser, is Cmd+Opt+C Cmd+Shift+G Cmd+V.
You can start typing a relative path and that works from the directory you're in. If you have folder/sub and you are in folder, you can type 'sub/' to enter it. Only navigating up is not possible I think.
