I agree that terminals are more "productive". One of the reasons that the mouse based interfaces gained such traction is that the sales people pitched it as "you can teach someone to use this interface in X amount of time" where X is orders of magnitude less than using a terminal interface. Like saying that Nodepad is quicker to learn than Emacs or Vim. This is true at face value, the trade off is that you pay for it later on as people become productive with it. Alas, cutting down "training time" and the costs involved with this for new employees is something bean counters can measure.