I understand your points, and you make several very valid ones at that.
But i can't help but feel there is a little bit of role-reversal here.
I am a customer of the software, I pay for the right to use the software.
ESRI is the manufacturer of the software.
If the manufacturer is going to change the product it is incumbent upon them to see that there is a plan for users to move forward.
I'm tired of doing that part of the job for them.
sde command line will be deprecated in 10.3
my workflow will no longer work, others will have the same issue
there will be a patch to 10.3 to address the issue
that patch will fail
a fix will be promised in 10.4
10.4 will morph into 11.0
11.0 will address the issue by forcing a different workflow rather than repairing the issue.
11.1 will contain the appropriate documentation about the issue
All of this could have been avoided with a right-click menu in ArcCatalog that says 'Register with Geodatabase' when i right -click on my spatial view.