> UIs for the general audience? TUIs! TUIs are easily to parse, succinct in organization and fast input - all for humans. Humans can parse TUIs. And they can make up a mental modal.

TUIs have the same drawbacks as GUIs and then some. Their big advantage is to work seamlessly over SSH but that’s pretty much it. They are not more discoverable and they are not more efficient than GUIs. There is nothing preventing you from having a decent GUI along the same lines as Midnight Commander to have a file manager without the metaphors you dislike, for example (as a matter of fact, there are several).