Why does vim feel so natural to me. why do I dislike pointing devices so much. I think this is because a pointing device treats space on the screen as continuous. Any kind of experience on the screen can be broken down into chunks of discrete things (I’m unable to express this concept clearly using words atm) Take tab switching in browser, it feels much more natural to me to switch to third tab using Ctrl-3. If there are tons of tabs open and I want to randomly go to a tab in the middle whose index I don’t know, I just randomly press Ctrl-number and go to that tab using Ctrl -Tab or Ctrl-Shift-Tab.
Vim divides text-editing experience into several levels. You can move character by character using h and l. Rise one level above and you can go forward one whole word using w and back one word using b. Rise above one level and you can move your way around lines using j, k or lineNumber Shift-g. Although having a steep learning curve in the beginning, dividing something into chunks makes you faster or just frees a lot of mental space in the longer run.
I think this is what douglas hofstadter is trying to say in Analogy at the core of cognition when he talks about chunking.
Or maybe I just despise taking my hands off of the keyboard