I agree with your last point. I disagree though that just icons can suffice, only in the sense that productivity is lost because without text, there is not a wa

I agree with your last point. I disagree though that just icons can suffice, only in the sense that productivity is lost because without text, there is not a way to easily distinguish between multiple instances of a program. The thing is, the text has to be maintained anyway, it's still there, for example in tooltips, so not giving users an option to show it has no real defense that I can see.