This is the same flow as Frontpage had in 1998. You edited a live-edited your site, and when you clicked publish, a static site was deployed to the world.
Sure, and Concrete5 in 2003[1]. Hard to beat editing directly (as long as you also have authentication handled) though it might be slower, if you have to tiptoe around formatting.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_CMS