[Affric]

I think to a large extent this is correct but, being the devils advocate, perhaps if the GIS tool were better then your friend wouldn’t have had quite as big a gain in free time?

Answering my own question somewhat, I think that LLMs are becoming a kind UI layer over many applications/tools for many users. Which is interesting. And in some ways they show signs of fulfilling the promise of AI.

[hutzlibu]

I think even with the best GUI (and I seldom have seen worse GUIs than with GIS tools), scripting is way more powerful, if you have advanced tasks.

[Affric]

Definitely more powerful but well crafted GUIs can enforce constraints on inputs and preview what changes would look like.

Agree that I have never seen a GIS tool where I thought the GUI was top notch.