I wouldn't say Swarm is much easier. You have to caveat 'easier' too. K8s is easier to do complicated things that were basically impossible before. It's the same with everything in software engineering. As we move up the ladder in abstractions, what's possible becomes more complicated, so it doesn't get any easier.

Graphics are good example. As people developed abstractions the ability to make more and more complicated graphics became possible. Now A+ games are more expensive and take longer to make then ever before, but they are also doing things that could of never happened before.

Our company is trying to make K8s much simpler to get into for the avg company, so another abstraction, but specifically done to make it simpler. This all feels very normal to me as someone that started back in the day managing 1000s of blade servers, now it's just containers. Was hard then and is hard now.