I don't think it's more complicated. Most of the time I see people doing "corrections" on the so-called proper way to use Unix tools, they're favoring concisen

I don't think it's more complicated. Most of the time I see people doing "corrections" on the so-called proper way to use Unix tools, they're favoring conciseness (sure, whatever) over intuitiveness. I uselessly use "cat" ALL THE TIME, because the Unix pipe metaphor is absolutely intuitively excellent. I know that I'm starting at the beginning with pipe and shoving data through, and I have a good idea about each step.