[mpalmer]

You might reconsider your expectations. Neovim is not trying to occupy the same space as something like VSCode or Atom. Its focus is on being extremely extensible without sacrificing performance - just look at the website, it's right at the top of the feature list.

The intention is for it to serve as the core technology for any number of vi-like text editing setups. It's not batteries-included, but there are batteries everywhere if you look.

    Mouse is off by default. Again, why? I get that it's a terminal editor, but if the technology is there to allow me to select text with my mouse, why do we need act like luddites?

Because it would be unexpected and unwelcome behavior for most users, and maybe even introduce undefined behavior in clients that lack mouse support.

    After setting up my .vimrc file with sane defaults and a bit of an attempt to use the editor in earnest, my conclusion is that Vim/Neovim is just a bad editor.

You haven't really explained why you think it's a bad editor, beyond the default settings you don't like.