[davidcuddeback]

> You could conceive of a GUI as merely a projection of internal state.

That mental model has been the most natural for me as well. It really clicked for me when reading Trygve Reenskaug's descriptions of MVC [1], particularly this paragraph (emphasis mine) and the illustration that follows:

> The essential purpose of MVC is to bridge the gap between the human user's mental model and the digital model that exists in the computer. The ideal MVC solution supports the user illusion of seeing and manipulating the domain information directly. The structure is useful if the user needs to see the same model element simultaneously in different contexts and/or from different viewpoints.

[1]: https://folk.universitetetioslo.no/trygver/themes/mvc/mvc-in...