"What's so cool about this is its flexibility."

This is something I have never understood.

I am a connoisseur of command line progams. I have used hundreds of them over decades. I write command line programs and scripts every week. It is an obsession. Yet I am embarassed to admit that honestly I have never understood the benefits of flexibility with passing arguments. I never understood the "getopt" movement. I do not use it. All my programs are very simple and straightforward without heaps fo options.

I apologise for being obtuse, but what am I missing?

To anyone who might be offended: I am not criticising flexibility of commandline arguments or its coolness. I just want to understand what are the practical advantages over something more simple and less flexible, like what I prefer. Only if I understand the advantages can I be an advocate for using numerous commandline options and flexibile parsing.

(Theres another post about setenv et al. on the front page right now. For programs that read from environ variables -- which can be a better alternative to using heaps of commandline options IMO -- I just use envdir from daemontools.)