But if we play this game you I could counter with "consider slaves, they pre-date control panels but took textual (or at least verbal) commands". It's a silly

But if we play this game you I could counter with "consider slaves, they pre-date control panels but took textual (or at least verbal) commands". It's a silly game isn't it? But we can gain some knowledge from the game nonethless. Control panels do have some great benefits, because the human vision system is so powerful, and because there is the possibility of direct manipulation. But the CLI has the great advantage that you are just telling the machine what to do, instead of having to point and grunt. But it's not good for ordinary users because the language is baroque while also requiring you to talk very precisely. We missed a lot by being slow to develop "fuzzy CLIs" where people can talk more lazily. The "press the windows key to search" feature from Win7 onwards is a good start in this direction.