I never understood the fervent love for midnight/norton commander. Its not like its a new phenomenon. I remember people raving about it in the late 90s too.

is it nostalgia, or is it really that useful?

For some people it's just how they work. I did consulting for a company, and the developer I sat next to on my visits used Total Commander of all things. It was probably the first thing he'd install on any new Windows machine. He never open Explorer, everything related to files was done within the confines of Total Commander. For those who got started with Norton Commander and moved to Linux/Unix from there, Midnight Commander is probably just the tool they are used to and it's completely ingrained in their workflows.

Personally I really want to like Midnight Commander, well I do like it, I just don't use it that much. As someone else pointed out, the keyboard shortcuts just doesn't work for me for some reason. I think if you grew up using the F-keys a lot, then it probably makes total sense.

MSDOS shell language was completely awful as I remember, so Norton Commander came in really handy.