It is heavy enough to tame much of the recoil, but a 44 mag is more boom than needed for home defense. I buy fairly hot 44 special ammo - 255 grain bullets at 900+ fps, IIRC - and use that instead. The 44 Mag ammo is for fun at the range, or maybe if I was hiking in bear country.
If I hadn't used a gun much before and wanted a good home defense type gun, I'd consider a .38 special with a 4" barrel. Cheaper ammo (about $0.35/bullet vs 0.65+ for 44 Mag), fairly easy to learn to shoot well, and quite capable of stopping someone if one aims the gun before shooting. And a 44 Mag won't drop a bad guy in an instant...see this link for "Have No Faith in Your Defensive Handgun Caliber or Load!":
http://www.snubnose.info/docs/No_faith.htm
An excerpt:
"In a life-and-death struggle, seconds seem like hours. The good guy has been forced to shoot the felon, but nothing happens despite a good hit. He shoots again and again and again and finally the bad guy drops. The actual time frame may have been but a few seconds, yet to our survivor, his handgun/load seemed not up to the job. None of them are in my opinion. Some are better than others, but none smite like the Hammer of Thor and it's simply not realistic to expect it. It could also be dangerous. Expect a failure and be mentally prepared to deal with it. Expect that multiple shots may be necessary to actually stop a determined aggressor."