Well in good tools (Tableau being one of them) there is always the raw SQL query somewhere (ideally with parameters) so that you can do the heavy lifting in code but style use the GUI for quick and nice interactive rendering.

PS: Well some tools are even cooler like QGis for map making. The GUI of this FOSS tool is heavily parametrizable and fully extensible/scriptable in Python/QT.

There is quite not not yet an equivalent in BI world...