the cli is just as much of a fiction, just fiction with a different focus
i agree that reading the manual is helpful, but doing stuff you don't understand is necessary to come to understand it, so i don't think it's good advice to avoid it. using the cli for simple things builds the skills you can use for more complex things. the same is true of a gui
(of course there are clis and guis incapable of doing complex things, and those are kind of a dead end)
> but doing stuff you don't understand is necessary to come to understand it
Only if you're doing an experiment and can constrain accidents. Any other type of activities would require to read the manual first. They're terse because they're supposed to be a reference, but you can usually find books that ease the way in. And then there's the domain expertise that is required. You need networking knowledge to interact with software like ip, operating system knowledge to understand what top is showing to you, etc. You can't get around that.
The GUI is a fixed canvas already painted by someone else, the CLI let you write your own poetry.
obtaining networking and operating systems knowledge includes as an essential part using software like ip and top (though try htop instead). it's not a strict sequencing but a back-and-forth interplay, synergistic with factors like study and mentorship
as for poetry, there are plenty of clis that aren't very expressive—rt-11, cp/m, grub, ms-dos, and mpv come to mind—and plenty of guis that are very expressive, such as godot, blender, inkscape, labview, solidworks, freecad, and sieuferd. you can write your own poetry as easily in godot as in bash
i agree that reading the manual is helpful, but doing stuff you don't understand is necessary to come to understand it, so i don't think it's good advice to avoid it. using the cli for simple things builds the skills you can use for more complex things. the same is true of a gui
(of course there are clis and guis incapable of doing complex things, and those are kind of a dead end)