It is progressively becoming quite more than a simple skin. They do have their own window manager and a quite comprehensive set of applications with simplified interfaces and consistent UI. To me it seems like a worthy goal, however it seems to create a separation between the typical Linux user/developer and their potential targeted users.
Not really. I developed on elementary quite a lot. I find its ease of getting around quite easy. Your text editor / IDE is at the front and everything else is completely tucked away + you can control basic things about your OS like music / notifications etc. without having to focus on some other app to make a change. And it's pretty lightweight.
Comparing that to GNOME, where everything is so damn big that it wastes half of my screen and KDE where the default apps are usually bloated and confusing and can do way too many things, I call Pantheon as a win for the developers.
EDIT: Also, one neat trick that I've never seen any other terminal emulator doing other than Pantheon Terminal, is that you get a desktop notification every time you're not focused on the terminal when it finishes its job. For example, let's say I do something like "sudo apt install netbeans". Since the download is large, I'm going to focus on something else in the meantime and I'll get a desktop notification when the installation is finished.
No thank you, I'd rather use Mint or Ubuntu if I want an easy distro.