The atomic "noun verb" structure of vim's commands is in fact highly versatile. For me, being able to operate on, search across, or navigate my text by <i>structure</i> is absolutely key.<p>It's not far from the Unix philosophy in general -- we get simple tools and send nouns (data) through them on pipes. Not always, but frequently. I recognized this distinction particularly from working on other systems which didn't have this facility: VMS, MVS, and of course Microsoft and Apple systems prior to OS X.<p>You rarely have the specific tool you want, but you can readily build it up out of components via pipes and some shell scripting. As opposed to the other systems where you rarely have the specific tool you want ... and you need a systems programmer to write it for you.