Having started my computer career in the 1980s, I strongly disagree. If the command line were all that, GUIs wouldn't have have taken off like a rocket in the first place.
WHen you say you strongly disagree; I'd assume you mean about the command line example. My point was more about how simple tools used every day by geeks might be useful to no-techny if made simpler and more accessible.
And when I say terminal, I don't mean it in "bash" or unix prompt.. A total new way to design it with a strong focus on simplicity and AI.
It's been attempted, many many times. We ended up with some really good text adventure parsers, but none that developed into productivity tools. If you do want to pursue this line of thought, do some searching on Magnetic Scrolls' approach to command parsing, I think a lot of that eventually got open-sourced.
