Maybe I’m unable to understand the tone of the author, 'cause I’m not a native English speaker or something like this, but I just read some positive and negative comments (pros and cons) of my favourite GIS software, most probably addressed to a wide audience of common GIS users.
GUI is not the main functionality asked for by GRASS GIS users, mostly looking for advanced analysis tools and a rigourous approach to data management and calculations.
GRASS GIS is (and the author acknowledge this) undoubtedly perfect for this. On the counterpart, being born with a different purpose from being a fast and efficient tool for cartography and map production, it is also true that performing such activities results in a choice for another SW (e.g. QGIS).
My suggestion is to comment suggesting to consider GRASS GIS a spatial analysis tool, more than a viewer or map printing tool.
And anyway the cons pointed out in the article are well known, so the choice is between saying “OK, let’s try to solve them all” or “that’s the situation 'cause we don’t care that much about these tools”.
Please, don’t change GRASS GIS GUI again, I’m still trying to migrate from the old and beloved tcltk GUI 
Cheers,
Carlo
---------- Messaggio inoltrato ----------
From: Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com>
To: grass-user@lists.osgeo.org
Cc:
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:55:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] GIS software popularity ranking: http://gisgeography.com/mapping-out-gis-software-landscape
On Mon, 26 Sep 2016, Blumentrath, Stefan wrote:FYI, I could not resist to also commenting on the GRASS “review” here:
Obviously, the authors of the review seem to be lost in new
surroundings.Stefan,
When you realize that the majority of computer users who write articles or
reviews for the Web know only Microsoft’s OSes the author’s ‘cons’ make
perfect sense.Too many users know only to point-and-click, drag-and-drop, and work in a
pretty GUI. The idea of typing something on a command line is not only
foreigh, but frightening; many have never done so before. When you see
complaints such as ‘the toolbars are in a different place’ and ‘handles
coordinate systems in different locations’ it is obvious that the writer is
very limited in understanding what’s important: function over form.I read reviews like this and know to ignore them. Those readers who accept
such reviews at face value are equally naive. The focus on the user
interface is typical of those who were taught superficial use of an
application without fully understanding how to use it to solve problems. The
analogy I use when texplaing my GIS or statistical tools to clients and
others is that one can teach someone how to use a word processor but that
does not make him a writer.Rich
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