The article on The Verge looks like it's about mobile phones, i.e., pocket-sized computers meant to be operated with touchscreens. Granted, today we can plug tactile USB keyboards into some of these "phones" and we have options like Termux, but the subject here, unlike the The Verge article, is command line programs.
Maybe no one besides me ever actually said those exact words with respect to command line programs. What did happen is someone wrote that he found user interfaces on command line programs are not "good" interfaces. He then suggested that writing command line programs that did not have to parse options could be a "security" tactic when programming. See "5. Don't parse" in the text file below.
Was this from an article by Golden Krishna, later turned into a book by the same title?
Archived article (or, how to open your car door in 13 steps): https://web.archive.org/web/20120831083217/http://www.cooper...
Previous HN discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4616945 (2012, 87 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4454004 (2012, 34 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4959406 (2012, 91 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9218686 (2015, 56 comments, about the book)
EDIT:
One of the old comments also addressed Unix tools more directly, referring to djb's work:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4456795
What are some relevant writings by djb on user interfaces?