Look down?
Don’t lots of automatics, esp. today with the direct shift on the floor, require one to “look down”?
Mine do. In the past it was mostly column shift, basically right in front of us, but not these days.
The thing with autos is that, once you choose, that is generally it. Done. Not until one wants to stop or change direction does the shift mechanism need to come into play. There must be something alse about buttons that was problematic.
When you're doing a three point turnaround with traffic bearing down on you it's nice not to have to deal with fiddly buttons. Or when you're maneuvering a pickup to line up with a trailer hitch which can take some back and forthing. Or anytime you need to shift quickly and by instinct and feel.
Over time you'll gain some muscle memory even with buttons just as you would with any poorly designed tool or interface, but it will never be as natural or intuitive as a shift lever.
A bank of buttons is simple and cheap to make compared to a shift lever mechanism. That's what car makers would use if they could get away with it, but it's just too poor of a design in terms of its operation.