[Yizahi]

It could be deprecated fast though if either big manufacturers decide to ship GUI only systems, or if GUI systems became way more reliable. Or could live forever.

For example we ship a certain device that can be configured fully both from CLI, from web GUI and from Windows application. Customers internally have teams that are 100% polarized - some teams use GUI stuff only and some teams use CLI only. Both refuse to switch on principle. ANd in our case I think in 5-10 years CLI will die. It is just a mess - you can do fast configuration with userfriendly extras in CLI but only on small scale. It just doesn't allow userfriendly editing of kilometer long configs, especially on 100s and 1000s of devices. So if we'll continue improve GUI configuration CLI will eventually die I think. Same could happen in general IT systems, provided there is better alternative (or forced alternative).

[i336_]

Right, that makes a lot of sense. If you develop the CLI version more and made it easier to (for example) batch-apply patterns against many datasets, and added sufficient facility to fix the other configuration gripes that are currently harder than in the GUI, well, the CLI will win some more.

I do have to agree, GUIs can be easier to use if they're well-designed. It's also arguably easier to build GUIs than CLIs in some situations, particularly where you don't need something to be fully Turing-complete.