Personally, I hate the Hole Hawg story. It reeks of pretentiousness and gatekeeping, and worse, the description of the Hole Hawg isn't even accurate. "A cube of metal"? That's not what a quick image search shows. "You screw a second handle in"-- except that the second handle is already there. "It's not sleek" -- again, a image search shows a perfectly normal handle with a perfectly normal grip.
The Unix command line has a lot to recommend it. Notably, the simple ergonomics of the pipeline are indeed great (other OSs have similar pipeline concepts; they just don't get used the same way because they are too clunky).
Here are a few pics from ebay. Note that the story is 22 years old and he worked in the 1980's so he may be thinking of an even older design than the one I found. It's not like literally a cube but it's notably more cube-like than any consumer drill, and the handle shown here looks like regular pipe with a rubber handle. I really don't think you should take writing like this literally.
The Unix command line has a lot to recommend it. Notably, the simple ergonomics of the pipeline are indeed great (other OSs have similar pipeline concepts; they just don't get used the same way because they are too clunky).