For quite a few years now it seems like a lot of Unix-style software has gone beyond text streams, to include a back channel connection to external data and pro

For quite a few years now it seems like a lot of Unix-style software has gone beyond text streams, to include a back channel connection to external data and processes (databases, http services, etc). I generally enjoy sharing context as a data structure with a file-system-like interface (e.g. REST) between processes, and only more so when the command/control interface is a simple text stream. Of course, this reminds me of Plan 9, but there's also 1060 Research, and other examples I'm sure. There is quite a lot of head room left in the Plan 9 paradigm, and you do yourself no disservice by taking some time to figure it out. It really is more Unix than Unix.