People do “framework” as you saying yet they call it “engine”, specially when they reuse it in different game, because engine is what i said, fundaments of for a game and it can be reusable. And doing simple engines is not that hard as people talking, they think that if you do engine you need to do complex tools and giant code base and such, make it do everything, when majority of engines are done to power specific kind of games. If you looks on quake, it practically had editor as a sperete software, yet people call it a engine, not to mention that engine was made by single man. Speaking of editors, you are aware of fact that UE4 editor is build on top of UE4 engine it self and when you package a game you only building engine without editor modules?
I still think you incorrect and you don’t understand how UE4 is build and you won’t be able to master UE4 as long as you think that way, mark my words 
Again Unreal (unlike Unity which was made more like game maker) was made just for single game, it was initially not ment to be a “engine” of your definition “to provide content creation tools and make games”, initially it was just level editor for game called Unreal in your definition of “engine”. But again i only assume that, i don’t know if Epic really wanted to sell engine when they been building Unreal, or they just though they can do other business with what they made once Unreal was out, Jazz Jackrabit 2 also had nice editor, but it was more primitive. Also as i mention above if you grab UE3/UDK it feels you install some kind of empty game and build on top of it, because there was no project system at all, it’s actually new feature in UE4
I also think we kind of lost, but it all started with discussion in C# can do in UE4. To back that discussion, C# in UE4 sould be plugged to UE4 framework as much as possible, make it feel like you coding in similar way to C++, or other way around, text form of blueprint.
I don’t think you are idiot, i just think you little overdressed with C# and as result not trying to explore what C++ can do because you think it too old and primitive and potentially hard to use… for me it was black magic until i tried it few months before UE4 was released, something clicked in my head… maybe i matured to it