There's shell curses (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-shellcurses/?ca=dgr-lnxw09shellcurses&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR https://www.ibm.com/devel

There's shell curses (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-shellcurses/?ca=dgr-lnxw09shellcurses&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-shellcurse...) that is very similar to graphics programming on those machines, minus the sprites. You can even do opengl programming: https://github.com/nrdvana/CmdlineGL https://github.com/nrdvana/CmdlineGL . There are some python shells around (the developer of one posts here) that might make for a better experience than bash though scripts though, either way they'll learn some real world tools.