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I've often figured out a GUI faster than it would take me to sift through to the relevant part in a manpage. They work well enough as a reference but I don't understand how people genuinely think they are the ideal tool for learning how to use some new software.

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I think so, too. This doesn't mean the CLI is less discoverable (assuming good design), just that active knowledge is harder to aquire than passive knowledge. Passive knowledge is enough to use a GUI, because you can just see where you need to click. There's a lot of "information in the world".

I find that CLIs are usually a little bit harder to learn, but often so much faster if you've learned them, that all professional developer tools should at least have CLI as a possibility.

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