I don't think you're alone, and to be honest, I'm as suprised as anyone that it turned out to be better. We built a lot of different implementations on the way here, and all of the initial versions started with code and plain text as the interface. But it's very hard (I think impossible) to change the user experience when you do that, because the data gets locked up in code - there isn't a good way to "see" what the real world is like, or what your proposed changes would do.

But you're not alone in thinking this, and I completely understand why you would. The history of things that look like this in this space is.. not great. :)