I probably spend more time than most in redis-cli because I find it invaluable when I'm writing software or getting to know a new module. If I didn't have redis-cli , understanding Redis' data structures and testing connections would be far more complicated, and I probably would've stopped using Redis long ago.
Redis-cli by itself isn't that complicated — it's a REPL (read-eval-print loop) that speaks to the Redis server. However, getting this jewel of a tool is not as straightforward for many. The source for redis-cli is included in the Redis GitHub repository and is automatically compiled when you build Redis from source. But what happens if you can't (or don't want to) build Redis from source? It means you also don't have redis-cli, and building an entire database from source just to get access to the command-line interface (CLI) utility is overkill and sometimes not even an option.