The article is outdated and inaccurate, mostly about plans. It seems like the article was never really updated since 2017. Especially in paragraph "Please note that the current phase of deployment is...".
There are serious drawbacks to using VE surface (very specific API to use). Using contenteditable gives some potential to avoid problems with text selection, copy&pasting, undo&redo and such. But also adds a significant overhead as there is no single API that works for all editors for that. I imagine this was the reason this editor didn't ever stick.
Also new features seem to be developed for so called 2010 editor (e.g. syntax highlighting, realtime preview). So the 2017 editor seems to be abandoned. Never even made out of beta to be a standard preference. I think the best option would be to be able to switch to this VE wikicode editing mode. Much like when you switch just one option to get syntax highlighting. Another option would be to integrate features of 2017 editor to syntax highlighting mode of 2010 editor. It would provide best experience for editing sections and at least short articles.
The naming is also very miss leading. I would call this a VE Wikicode Editor or Visual Wikicode Editor. It is a wikicode editor, but it's based on VE components. So called 2010 editor has been updated in many ways and calling it 2010 edit is missleading. I would call the 2010 editor the Standard Wikicode Editor or the Textarea Wikicode Editor.