Don't worry, I do understand where this feedback comes from! It is true that this is not a full-featured editor and we describe it as "lightweight." I do go over some use cases in this post and point out a couple items where the new version may provide advantage.
The previous HyperEdit did have a live validation that would red-underline and show mistakes in HTML4 and XHTML documents. Unfortunately the validator we previously used could not support HTML5. I am hoping to bring this back soon, but there are a few licensing and technical hurdles.
Whisk uses OgreKit that allows for advanced regular expressions in find and replace. You should be able to get to it via the standard Command-F. Are you not seeing it?
HyperEdit was my first shareware project that I started while in college in 2003. It has been on the back-burner for a while, but I (and as an extension Tumult) have a commitment to maintain and update the software we make!
The first step and goal for 2.0 is to support Catalina, modernize the code, and bring UI consistency with Hype. So for a 2.0 beta there won't be too many more features added, but this release represents a step on further development and hopefully more exciting/compelling features in the future. We're welcome to all feedback 
. Thanks!