vim is not for everyone and if it was too easy, it would probably be limited, perhaps even loose some respect. To attain a certain high level of usability things naturally start becoming more complex.
>Surely 'editor as a language' can be done better.
everything can always be done better, but its a matter of doing. When the doing starts, it will appear that its not as easy in execution as conception.
The thing is that vim is actually pretty simple to learn. The arrow keys still work. in macvim you have a high level of usability out of the box with mouse support enabled, copy and paste from the system pasteboard using normal keys, etc....
Even if you are using vanilla vim you can learn the basics of how to edit a file to notepad levels in about 1 min. (command line vim "new file name", press i, use as a normal editor, press escape, press :wq)
vim -y starts vim in "easy" mode where vim essentially behaves like dumb editor like Notepad++ would. And even in terminal (at least in OS X with iTerm2) you get mouse support for cursor positioning and visual selections.
>Surely 'editor as a language' can be done better.
everything can always be done better, but its a matter of doing. When the doing starts, it will appear that its not as easy in execution as conception.