It's just a learning curve. Over time it starts becoming second nature and you don't even notice that you're doing it. Must like most things we do in our day to day that are actually rather complication functions (driving, writing, walking, etc).
What I do like about the vim keys though is the ability to delete or copy/paste with precision by chaining hotkeys together.
Regarding your searching for a word example, unsurprisingly you can do the same in vi (let alone vim) too:
/ - search forwards
? - search backwards
edit: It wasn't me who voted you down by the way. I know you've not complained about it but I wanted to express that I don't agree with you getting downvoted even though I don't agree with the content of your post.
What I do like about the vim keys though is the ability to delete or copy/paste with precision by chaining hotkeys together.
Regarding your searching for a word example, unsurprisingly you can do the same in vi (let alone vim) too:
edit: It wasn't me who voted you down by the way. I know you've not complained about it but I wanted to express that I don't agree with you getting downvoted even though I don't agree with the content of your post.