Regarding the benefits of CLIs, "reification" is only one benefit of many:

Economy:

Graphical protocols like X or web standards are much heavier over the wire than text, and are often not suitable for many use cases. There is also economy of movement, moving the hand back and forth from keyboard to mouse or up to the screen to tap.

Consistency:

Text is a relatively simple data format supported everywhere. Cutting and pasting data with images and formatting, for example, is often a mess or doesn't work.

Precision:

Mouse (and touch) input is imprecise and frustrating analog experience. Clicking on a specific point requires moving to it and not missing it. Grabbing an edge of a window is the least elegant gesture ever created. Text entry is precise and digital.