[magicalist]

I kind of agree, though hidden powerful features aren't inherently an anti-pattern (see, e.g. keyboard shortcuts). You just need to provide affordances for everyone to be able to use an interface at some useful level.

I'm a fan of the style of gmail's advanced search (for example), which has all the various fields to fill in if you drop it down, but then when you execute the search, it converts them into the search operators, thus teaching you how to use them (if you care enough to pay attention...if not, the field boxes are still there for you to use).