The menubars of yesteryear could get out of hand sure, but I’m not convinced that the patterns that came to replace them are clear wins.
For instance, menubars at least have the benefit of standardized behavior between programs and platforms. To me that’s better than what we frequently have today, where it’s not unusual for functions to get buried 3 modals deep with zero commonality between programs, aside from maybe involving a hamburger menu (which doesn’t benefit from being a standard, because it’s a junk drawer with contents varying dramatically between apps).
I mentally "tch" (the annoyance sound) whenever I go to GitHub or other sites to login, and then open KeePassXC, and the login button hides behind their junk drawer just because my window resized (tiling window manager).
There is still screen space to put it outside, ffs. Right next to the "Sign Up" button. Your 32x32px logo surely doesn't need all that padding, does it?
AutoCAD does have a command line, though. The most common commands have names one or two characters long, and you can use Space instead of Enter, so it's really comfy, you can dedicate one of your hands entirely to the mouse, and use the keyboard with the other one.
Once activated, these commands start asking for arguments, which you can select with similar short abbreviations, or pick a point with the mouse.
You also have customizable toolbars, which can be placed both horizontally and vertically around the drawing area, and you can pick which buttons you want exposed and which you don't need (often).
The menus are mostly to help you explore the available functionality while you are still a beginner. Also, having a fixed location for a piece of functionality makes it easier to refer to it in a book, for example.
This was twenty years ago, though. I remember there was a push to make it more Windows-looking with every new release (It's Unix native, IIRC). Maybe, by now, it's a joke. I don't know.
> The menus are mostly to help you explore the available functionality while you are still a beginner.
Yes, this is one of the most valuable parts of a proper menu system: it’s basically an index of everything a program can do, and it can even be made searchable (like the menus of any app using the native menubar on macOS is).
Menus are also an amazing hook point for accessibility utilities and make things like implementing a HUD UI that works across apps (like Ubuntu’s Unity did) trivial.
For instance, menubars at least have the benefit of standardized behavior between programs and platforms. To me that’s better than what we frequently have today, where it’s not unusual for functions to get buried 3 modals deep with zero commonality between programs, aside from maybe involving a hamburger menu (which doesn’t benefit from being a standard, because it’s a junk drawer with contents varying dramatically between apps).