At after school care when I was in kindergarten, they had computers that would play Oregon Trail, which you had to launch from the command line. There were post-it notes with instructions for how to do it. We did it. All of us. It wasn't rocket science.
We all did, there were GUIs available at the time (Win 3.1) but most good games ran from a command line interface, you could get quite a long way just understanding the "dir" and "cd" commands.
The biggest thing stopping people from using computers at that point in time seemed to be how expensive they were rather than that we had difficultly getting them to work.
Sure but that isn't learning the fundamentals which seems to be the basic goal of the OP.
I too could use the command line at a young age with the most basic things. I could even program a little back then. But I wasn't learning the fundamentals that way.
As far as I'm aware there isn't some universally recognized "right" way to teach people how to use computers. I remember 10 years ago everyone was certain that teaching kids to use MS Word was the most important thing in the world, now it seems to be avoiding creeps on facebook.
I'd be thrilled that they are actually learning something, especially something designed for "grown ups" rather than kids.
I am simply reacting and commententing to the overall theme of the comments and the OP's essay which is I read as him teaching his kids the fundamentals by playing around with non-GUI interfaces.
I remember using a Commodore 64 when I was 3. We had a book of BASIC programs that had to be typed in every time you wanted to run them, or you could store them on a cassette tape.
It's about time I start teaching my 3 year old daughter how to program a computer; hopefully she hasn't been too badly spoiled by the iPad.
