So... not really any difference, in any sense that is remotely relevant. My point was that the shell interface is a much better UI than it is programming language.
Apparently we disagree. My interaction with a readline interface in a context I understand is neither unplanned nor ill disciplined. You can throw around pejoratives, but clearly you cannot support them.
The window manager handles input/output and sends bytes to stdout for processing. The environment is a per process filesystem in /proc/$pid/env/ .
Keeping the TTY around is a dumb move. Kill it with fire.