The fact that webdevs believe it is shit UI is a big indicator that it is quite good.
But actually, who cars? It's still doing its job well enough, while delivering a very powerful experience. On that level of ability, it's quite hard and demanding to build a good interface, and a dev who is so deep in CLI that he even builds his own terminal is unlikely to have the necessary competence in that area to make something better.
Oh, so you're advocating redesign for the sake of redesign?
Find the warts, optimize them, let it evolve and bring the workflows to the next level. The app is old and grown, one doesn't need to reinvent it, to make it better. And with its complex purpose, you would end up with something similar anyway.
Which one? GTK, QT, MacOS, the myriad in today's web?