Console based applications are light on system resources (very useful on low specified machines), can be faster and more efficient than their graphical counterparts, they do not stop working when X is restarted, and are perfect for scripting purposes.
When designed well, console applications offer a surprisingly improvement in productivity. The applications are leaner, faster, easier to maintain, and remove the need to have installed a whole raft of libraries. So what does the command-line offer users. There is a wide range of console based software which provide the same or similar functionality to their graphical equivalents. In the field of system administration, Linux is blessed with a good range of graphical file managers. However, some users are in their comfort zone managing files from the shell, finding it the fastest way to navigate the file system and perform file operations. This is in part because console based file managers are more keyboard friendly, enabling users to perform file operations without using a mouse, and make it quicker to navigate the filesystem and issue commands in the console at the same time.