For my own personal use I think text based interfaces (with pipes) are superior, the higher level pluggable components in AppleScript/Automator seem more usable

For my own personal use I think text based interfaces (with pipes) are superior, the higher level pluggable components in AppleScript/Automator seem more usable in general. That said, there was an excellent article recently with the experiences of a trainer in getting people to use *nix, who found the minimalistic "command mode" more usable due to it's text oriented simplicity.