As the author of the original answer, I have to agree that the interface is shambolic compared to iptables. I think much of this is due to using the same interface ideas as what is in the "ip" command which follows the same principles and is also underused in favour of ifconfig. They are actually part of the same package in fact.
ifconfig has technically been deprecated in favour of ip for about 8 years.
In any case, resource control on Linux is very very good these days. From traffic control to control groups (you can also manage tc classes in control groups too), its worth any system administrator having things like tc and cgroups in their arsenal so that the operating system controls the applications / users and not the other way around.
A pain in the ass compared to other CLI interfaces I agree, but I personally place resource management high on my things to know about, in the same way I put access management and storage management there too.