I used to do it all the time in MKDS and my mates hated me for it! The drift is just too easy to pull off.

From what I've read, snaking is bad because it breaks the balance of the game since only certain characters could use it.

Although, I still see no problem. (That is, if near every character could use it.)

Snaking ruined Mario Kart DS online (enough said). Also, I had no problem with offline cups without snaking. Perhaps you should have used a different racer / car combo. Try Dry Bones...

Snaking is part of the game and requires skill. Now hacking the code is bad.

Snaking is only in MKDS. All other Mario Karts had different drifting boosts, SSMTs (Straight Stretched Mini Turbo) being an extreme of the implemented MT in 64 and DD, NBT in SMK which is pretty much like MKSC.
People complain about it because MKDS was the first really successful MK. And it had online. So you read bad comments from a lot of players that weren't even around before or only tried some MK multiplayer at friends'.
Nintendo always added those boosts because it makes the game more interesting. It is always mentioned in the manual and it's absolutely legit to use a boost whenever you can.
MKW is simply boring when it comes to competition because everything's created in a way that the pack will always stay together.

Also, people tend to confuse snaking with PRB. While snaking is just going from one side to another getting the drift boosts, PRB is a glitch that makes you stay at top speed even off-road.

  I bet the same people complain about L canceling and wavedashing in Melee as well. Just try to become good  at the game for God's sake.  That's why Mario Kart Wii and Brawl respectively are so boring to me. They both cater to casual gamers and took out what was awesome about the previous games.

I'm very bad at snaking. I can barely do it and I've practiced quite a bit

Well, this is pretty much it. "Whenever X is a possible answer, it's always the best answer" coupled with "you can use X ~90+% of the time" makes any game an X spamfest where other abilities, as interesting as they can be, have a minimal impact in the outcome, making being successful in said game a simple matter.

It's funny that we have people complaining about MK Wii, where as unbalanced as the vehicle roster was, to be fast you needed to master several skills and know when and which one to use.

And yes, I used snaking in the MK DD days.

Not really. The items are way more connected to your position than in other karts (star on 3rd was possible earlier, but on MKW? Nope.) to make you catch up from behind and hinder the players in front who get a banana (wow).

Sure, you can run away from normal players by mastering sharp drifts and instant wheelies without steering for correction or keeping mushrooms to dodge the blue shell but that's not a big thing (take a look at the WR on Luigi Circuit that hasn't dropped at all since the release of the game. It just went 1'09"9 -> 1'09"1 or 2. Just shows how hard this game is to "master"). Lots of people can do that and if you throw them into the same race you will never see the same guy come out in the top3 if he really plays on his own.

Since you "snaked" in DD, I won't take your knowledge about MK too seriously, though.

You'd probably lose on any MK then. Every kart game had boosting techniques that have been superior to normal driving. It is part of the game. Nobody ever said Mario Kart is about holding A and steering. It's just that players who never cared a lot about the game noticed they suck when they finally were able to play online against humans that don't live down the street.

That's like saying enemies in RPGs are unfair when they are at a higher level and using magic spells you can't access.