The "gestalt" idea is very interesting: learning about one part of the system teaches you about other parts, mostly because that other part was probably designed by the same person.

I've been thinking about this when I use my TiVo. It's a wonderful human interface, and I've never read any instructions on how to use it. Often, I'll get to one of it's menus, and just try something because that's how it worked in some other part of the system. Often, surpriseingly, it works there too.

I think in some contexts, people might call this "grokking" the system. You understand it at some gut level.

Once you get one Larry's wavelength, for instance, a lot more of the design decisions make sense. Maybe that's sort of like the struggle intermediate programmers go through to have a breakthrough in understanding. For some reason, I'm now thinking of that scene in the Matrix where Neo gets up after being shot several times and realizes, despite all of his suffering through the movie, that "Hey, I am The Man!" as he flexes his deltoids and the walls in the room bulge. :)