I believe you're mistaking "easy" with "convenient".
Pattern matching makes for more readable code. And more readable code makes writing projects easier.
It is also more convenient to write code using pattern matching, but that isn't the primary benefit.
"True" readability is achieved through a consistent structuring of your program, which has to conform to the expectations of the reader.
Programmers must first build this expectation from picking up patterns in the code, which emerge no matter if you use pattern matching or an equivalent structure using the available language constructs.
You can always write in assembly code, with all that consistent structuring and conforming to expectation. But I'll takes writing in higher language with "abstraction you can write yourself" any day.