If you have used a Lisp Machine with something like Zmacs for an extended time, then one often manipulates with the mouse. Same sequence: mark, execute. For some things there is also modifier-click on something visual which creates a region.

Thus the whole select the object, execute sequence is the same:

* emacs keystrokes

* mouse manipulation

* Lisp functions: get the arguments, execute a function

Thus it is a very consistent model.

Unfortunately I never had such pleasure. I understand a little more the appeal to have consistency between mouse and keyboard operations.

Maybe I'm more a schemer than a lisper then because even though the function call protocol is eval args, eval body, one of the nicest thing about lisps is higher order functions. Vi feels exactly like this; a move is an abstract operation that can live on its own, or be passed to another abstract operation to be combined.

To the extreme it reminds me of point-free programming where you dont even pass ~toplevel arguments, you just accumulate hof.

> It seems backward to me.

That's just unfamiliarity. Spanish initially seemed backwards to me because they say "casa blanca" and not "white house", but you get used to it.

I've used all sorts of user interaction schemes, I don't think that's habit anymore.

It's an unnecessary explicit operative order. Like saying writing assembly code is just like C backwards, you'll get used to write callee saved arguments on the stack.