[btschaegg]

I wonder if that's the feeling too if you come back to a "normal" programming language after getting reasonably proficient in Lisp.

I see a couple of interesting parallels there - the biggest difference of Vim's modal commands to other control schemes (except maybe Emacs') is that they compose rather well. Add macros to that, and you can define (more or less) abstract editing functionality on the fly. It's basically a similar thing to what Lisp did to ASTs with it's homoiconicity and the macro system on top of it...

[sevensor]

That is a very interesting point. I've been starting to study Racket, and although far from proficient, I can see the analogy. I really appreciate the lack of mental overhead for syntax, and I'm beginning to get a feel for how you might be able to plug things together.