Though this thread is quite old, it is relevant now also. First thing: Coreldraw, like Illustrator, is a great program where you can easily create and work on vector graphics, and Photoshop is great to work on raster graphics. (Please Google vector and raster graphics if you wish to learn the difference). Of course, both Illustrator and Coreldraw have their own special features, but if you wish to learn one of those two, then begin with any one and the second will be easy to use later because the fundamental usage is same.
I've been using Coreldraw since 1990s for commercial use, and it was sufficient to create all graphic needs of a world famous exhibitions center in middle-east, where we were creating 100s of such vector images for exhibitions purposes during EVERY exhibition -- and sometimes we even had 2 very large exhibitions and 2-3 smaller exhibitions every month. All the main graphical work was vector based to enable precision cutting on advanced Vinyl cutting robots, and all were done using Coreldraw then.
In the present time, it is as useful and as versatile as it was then for working on vector graphics. It is much easier to learn than Illustrator imo.

Of course, Coreldraw isn't "
all about memegenerator and MS Paint."

In fact MS Paint is not even considered as a
true VECTOR graphics application, whereas Coreldraw and Illustrator are
true vector graphics applications!