nah it just shows how the valuable abstractions have moved up. i bet this 8 year mark will only get later over time until it disappears
nmcli is more abstract than ip+iw+wpa_supplicant, but it's no more or less abstract than any GUI network configuration widget.
The output of ls is no more or less abstract than the contents of a directory as displayed by a GUI file manager. It's the same metaphor and the same information displayed in two different formats.