This doesn't work as a solution to the problem in focus here. Consider: could you implement a chat app that worked as effectively as the ssh one if you used ly

This doesn't work as a solution to the problem in focus here. Consider: could you implement a chat app that worked as effectively as the ssh one if you used lynx as the client? No, because interaction with lynx is synchronous. The original article is making a point that you can build effective apps that work over ssh. The post at the root of this thread raised concerns about using ssh specifically. Hypothetically you could have a console based web browser that supported javascript and websockets, and then expose the chat server over javascript. But that wouldn't be a good solution either: it's a specialised client and a large number of layers to achieve something that the ssh chat app shows to be straightforward - a secure, generic approach to exposing async functionality to a thin console tool.