In my experience, it takes an incredible amount of effort and experience to solve a complex problem with simplicity and efficiency. It's well worth it, but there's definitely a cost, and not everyone is capable of it.
That's one thing that's so intriguing about Moore. He's a living specimen of an alternate computing history. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he had been in, say, Backus's position at the dawn of high-level languages.