[ColonelPhantom]

Well, in Vim, "switching to normal mode" can be thought of as "ending an insert command" instead of "switching modes", which makes sense as soon as you realize that normal mode is, well, normal.

So when you press "o", I don't think "switch to insert mode". I think "insert a line with the following text:", which can then be undone with u, repeated with ., or whatever else you want.

At least that's my mental model of Vim, I don't know which is closer to reality.