Do you think mcrypt is too difficult to use?

[howa]

php mcrypt is perhaps the most difficult to use modules, e.g.
$key = "this is a secret key";
$input = "Let us meet at 9 o'clock at the secret place.";

$td = mcrypt_module_open('tripledes', '', 'ecb', '');
$iv = mcrypt_create_iv (mcrypt_enc_get_iv_size($td), MCRYPT_RAND);
mcrypt_generic_init($td, $key, $iv);
$encrypted_data = mcrypt_generic($td, $input);
mcrypt_generic_deinit($td);
mcrypt_module_close($td);
broken into too many steps which is error prone...