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a gui is legitimately slower in most contexts. I will never understand why people feel like they need one so bad.
edit: spelling mistakes.
Hmm, now that I think about it, I want to say a GUI provides a (potentially false) sense of security.
At the very least, it gives an intuitive sense of direction, so that you can use a program with very little understanding of it. Things like Handbrake over ffmpeg I'd prefer over having to look up how to do 2-pass conversions online every time I want to make one.
The menus tell you all of the things it can do in a relatively intuitive way. It's easier and quicker to get started than reading the help/man page and remembering commands. Much shallower learning curve -- but of course, a much lower ceiling on what you can do as your proficiency grows.