About your editor rant, I am not sure I agree with you. A great editor will help you for sure in productivity. However, a language shouldn't be unreadable without a correct editor.

Imagine that, to read English, you actually needed a powerful editor.. Yes, some tools help you to be more productive (such as searching, replacing, etc.).

So, again in my opinion, a good test to see if a language is readable is to print it and read it without any special tools such as syntax highlighting. If you can actually do that, imagine how syntax highlighting will make you even more productive!

By the way, it may sound absurd, but try reading English or Python without colors..