Originally Posted by WaltPoutine

Bad, unsupported analogy genec. Neither the CLI nor GUIs are intuitive. Both make large assumptions about the user plonked in front of them and those proficient with one can be remarkably unproductive with the other without training in their specific semiotics. They each have their appropriate domain in which they provide an optimal interface for the task at hand but are remarkably inappropriate for other tasks. Try administering a server solely with GUIs and for all but the most trivial tasks you'll be damn inefficient due to the lack of scripting. Conversely I wouldn't want to draw a picture on the command line (although it's possible with some horrible old markup languages.)

Neal Stephenson's famous essay _In The Beginning Was The Command Line_ [1] suggests that such thinking is because: "We want GUIs largely because they are convenient and because they are easy-- or at least the GUI makes it seem that way Of course, nothing is really easy and simple, and putting a nice interface on top of it does not change that fact. A car controlled through a GUI would be easier to drive than one controlled through pedals and steering wheel, but it would be incredibly dangerous.
By using GUIs all the time we have insensibly bought into a premise that few people would have accepted if it were presented to them bluntly: namely, that hard things can be made easy, and complicated things simple, by putting the right interface on them."

Ironically it seems that this is somewhat parallel to the thinking about bike facilities which sees them as a way to pander to the unrealistic fear of some people who don't currently bicycle and may never do so: cover up the basic responsibilities and rules, tell them that it's scary and difficult and then give something that is actually inappropriate in many situations. All this contortion on the hope that they might start cycling even though cycling is presented as a childish, difficult and scary exercise in American popular culture.

We can start chipping away at the "scary" bit by not playing it up and creating a distorted perception of risk.

1. http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y..._I_C_O_N.shtml