I strongly agree.
I'd add a perhaps more subtle point: Tom says that 3rd-parties can
address this, which is true - and they do.
But there is something to be said for a canonical interface.
Canonical,
"blessed" interfaces are attractive for a number of reasons, not least
that they are more likely to receive attention during development and
are less likely to become broken through neglect.
Indeed. If I am not mistaken, one of the long-term goals of the Arch
and Pika projects is to create something name itla, which would make
it easy to write high-level, interactive interfaces to tla.