In the late 90's I was doing a lot of IT work as a college student. One of my clients was an accounting firm that was still on a Novell Netware network. All of their apps were ancient terminal-based programs. Lotus 123 was one of the most important. I switched them over to a Linux server and NT workstations. The nightmare of getting captured LPT ports and print-servers configured to emulate Netware-style print queues was enough for me to lose it most days. Finally I asked, "why not just use MS Excel?" Then I watched one of the accountants. He completely flew around Lotus in a way that was inspiring. I imagine forcing him to learn a new tool would have introduced one heck of a hinderance to his daily grind. To this day, I have a serious affinity for CLI apps because of how well that team was able to zip through their work.
