I regularly use shell scripts. I do know how to use the GUI to change file permissions to make them executable. But why would I open a file manager, browse to the file location, right click, select properties, select permissions, and save, instead of just firing off "chmod a+x *.sh"?

The last shell script I made for work automatically concatenated a bunch of PDF documents, applied a watermark, and printed two copies, all using command line utilities. A simple task that would take several minutes for the user to perform with GUI tools.

This was a simple task that was regularly performed by several users. The command line gave the user a simple, consistent method to automate this task. To my way of thinking, that makes the command line more user-friendly: it does not limit the user to the pre-configured operations allowed by the GUI.