[timberfox]

My experience is quite different: I feel extremely productive working in the terminal, and what is described in the article as "The frozen world" is for me a virtue of the UNIX philosophy: the structure is not embedded in the data, but the programs can project a structure on it. That allows programs to be filters, and text to be the only format for exchanging information. What the article describes as "The nightmare that is composition iteration" is for me a very pleasant experience: the terminal provides a very fast feedback loop where I can iteratively examine the output of a command and refine the filters I apply. As a result, I am able to prototype commands quickly and accurately.

[Firadeoclus]

> the terminal provides a very fast feedback loop where I can iteratively examine the output of a command and refine the filters I apply. As a result, I am able to prototype commands quickly and accurately.

That's what any REPL does. And it works great with typed data. Sometimes even with graphical output.

[nomel]

> the terminal provides a very fast feedback loop where I can iteratively examine the output of a command and refine the filters I apply

An IDE would be used to develop those commands, more than compose them.

> text to be the only format for exchanging information

For this to work, with non-text data, you end up using the file system as a buffer, then passing filepaths between commands. For many contexts, this isn't performant enough.