There are many powerful GUIs to assist web professionals, and, they are excellent. They often allow people to perform tasks that they would not otherwise be able to. This is valuable for inexperienced users, however, it is not an excuse to be casual with skills.

When you must get something done, and the GUI is the fastest way to achieve the goal, the GUI is vital. However, when you have a little bit of time, it is definitely worth understanding what the GUI is doing, and learning how to do it on the command line.

Most GUIs provide displays to show the underlying actions. phpMyAdmin provides a GUI to create the queries, but also displays the MySQL. It can be a great learning tool.

Command line control is usually faster than a GUI. The GUI protects you from errors, by guiding you through the operations step by step. On the command line, you can enter exactly what you want. If there is an error, you’ll usually get a message. Potential catastrophic operations are usually preceded with some sort of warning or confirmation.

Finally, there are times when the GUI won’t work, or you won’t have one. If you can use the command line, you will still be able to do all the work.