Yes. I would suggest anybody who poses the question "why not" to try to actually implement SSH from the scratch! I've looked at some "smaller" implementations t

Yes. I would suggest anybody who poses the question "why not" to try to actually implement SSH from the scratch! I've looked at some "smaller" implementations than OpenSSH and they are still, like you say, "weird." SSH appeared to me to be an implementation of the console application that got crypto and network code bolted on, everything kept together almost with the Sellotape. And it doesn't change when somebody has to re-implement it as most of the "features" have to exist for a thing to work. However, there are also some advantages in using SSH for some purposes: for somebody who knows what he does, just the key management is actually less weird than the whole SSL thing. The tunneling is also very convenient and I like it.